Daniel Craig in Chaps/Catching Fire

I just came back from watching Cowboys and Aliens. It was freaking awesome! I would pay full price to see it again! I don't want to give you any more spoilers than you'll get from going to the Official Movie Page, but lookee here:

(You're welcome.)

I'm going to be a bit flaky and not write much because I am so engrossed in the second book of the Hunger Games Series, Catching Fire. I have less than 100 pages to go, then on to the third and final book in the series, Mockingjay. So....um...bye for now....

  

Nothing Comes to Mind...

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times....
That is the only opening line that immediately comes to mind*. Obviously, it isn't my creation. My own opening line? I can't think of any offhand. I've been sitting here for several minutes and still, nothing comes to mind.

What does keep coming to my mind recently is how I have apparently been watching too much BBCAmerica because there I was watching a program where one of the characters is supposed to be from London, but I turn to my daughter, and say, "Actually, she sounds more like she's from Wales, doesn't she?" My daughter looks at me like she has no idea what I am talking about. That would be due to the fact that she had no idea what I was talking about.  But then, she doesn't watch as many programs on BBCAmerica as I do. I am now beginning to differentiate a few UK dialects from each other. Possibly around the same amount of US dialects that I could tell apart from each other--and I was born and raised here, in Southern California! Maybe I should start watching some telenovellas on Univision and see what happens?



*NaBloPoMo's writing prompt for today is: What is the best first sentence you can think of off the top of your head?

Is There a Doctor in the House?

NaBloPoMo's writing prompt for the day: Which character would you most like to meet?

Here's my answer:

And just to make things perfectly clear:

Clear enough?

Yes, I Do Realize There is No One Else in the Room

I am reading a novel and really getting into it. The writer has done an excellent job of making me feel outraged at the behavior of one of the antagonists. I don't realize quite how outraged I am until my daughter walks in the room and asks, "Who are you talking to, mom?"

"Um...no one," I reply, while attempting to avoid eye contact with my fifth grader.

"Then why did I hear you talking?" 

That's when she notices my book.

"Oh, are mad at your book again?"

"Yes..." I'm still avoiding eye contact, while uselessly attempting to stifle a grin. 

My daughter just laughs quietly and rolls her eyes on her way out of the room. She knows she can't say much because she has been caught talking to empty rooms on many occasions; though I have yet to catch her telling off a troublesome fictional character --this does not mean it hasn't happened-- just that she hasn't yet been caught!

I have been known to spend a good fifteen minutes or more (at least until the back light in my NOOK Color times out) having heated conversations with some character, attempting to verbally rip them a new one for all the horrible things they are doing to the protagonist. I hoped that my sharp tongued lectures would shame Jane Eyre's wicked aunt, Mrs. Reed into decency. I fantasized about having Miss Scatcherd drawn and quartered.

When I was younger, I wanted in on all the action in the Chronicles of Narnia. I seriously wanted to meet Reepicheep. I didn't realize that I might also like to meet Mr. Tumnus, though until I saw him portrayed by James McAvoy, but then, that's another story...

(Rawr!) 

Should Be Reading's Teaser Tuesdays/ Favorite author?

This morning I learned about Teaser Tuesdays from the NaBloPoMo site. I am supposed to take the book I am currently reading, turn to a random page, share 2 teaser sentences (no spoilers) and post them to your blog along with the title of the book and author, sharing the link in the comments section of the Teaser Tuesday's post on the Should Be Reading blog. If you don't have a blog, then post the information directly in the comments of the Teaser Tuesdays post.

The book I am reading, I downloaded to my NOOK Color, so I'm not quite sure how I'm supposed to "turn" to a random page. It doesn't seem to have a feature for that, so I'm bookmarking the page I'm on, closing my eyes and turning pages back for a few seconds. Hopefully I will find a good couple of teasers when I land. I don't know if the rule is that the sentences have to be consecutive, or just on the same page. I'm going with "on the same page, but in the same paragraph."

Here goes:

"One kiss equals one pot of broth....To say my thoughts aloud would be tipping off the audience that the romance had been fabricated to play on their sympathies and that would result in no food at all."


Pg. 209, "The Hunger Games" by Suzanne Collins

I don't know if it is against the rules to post a second teaser from another book, but I also happen to be reading another book --this time a book with actual pages, so turning to a random page feels a bit more random. Here ya go:

"I guess the world isn't perfect. If it was, Milky Ways would only have one gram of fat and Tim Burton never would have made a musical."


Pg. 101, "It Looked Different on the Model" by Laurie Notaro


My Favorite Author


NaBloPoMo's writing prompt for the day asks, "Who is your favorite author?" Like, I'm supposed to choose one?

I'm looking at my bookshelves, and "Koontz" and "King" seem to be standing out. Also, some Michael Crichton, Elmore Leonard and Dick Francis. So far, I haven't read any Elmore Leonard or Dick Francis, but a local used bookstore was having a going out of business sale, so I stocked up.

Growing up, Judy Blume, Madeleine L'Engle, and C.S. Lewis were favorites. When I was a bit younger, I read and loved all the "Little House on The Prairie" books by Laura Ingalls Wilder. I tired to get into "Nancy Drew" and liked that series a bit, but never quite got as excited about them as the generations before me.  My 6th grade teacher read the "Great Brain" series by John Dennis Fitzgerald.

I also love Laurie Notaro, Douglas Adams, Jane Austen, Charlotte Brontë, Sylvia Plath, Dave Sedaris and Augusten Burroughs.
How can I choose just one??

And Here I am Whining About a Broken Air-Conditioning Unit

In Barbara Kingslover's "The Poisonwood Bible," she tells the story of a family brought to the Congo in 1959 by their missionary father. It is told from alternating points of view of the four sisters and their mother. What stood out for me were the many hardships they faced, simply trying to stay alive and how their situation affected each of them differently, in most cases helping to build their characters for the better.

Here I am in my 1900 sq foot tract home, and I'm getting ancy and have been complaining because our A/C went out this weekend. The guy is coming out today to fix it, but I've been complaining because I'm feeling suffocated in my home where temperatures have shot up all the way to 84 degrees (it's 91 degrees outside today). Yet here is this family --albeit, fictional--who are living in the CONGO with NO CENTRAL AIR. They get to have the excitement of lizards climbing on the walls, worrying about black mambas and an ant attack that makes The Naked Jungle look like a cake walk. Mmmmm.... cake.

We have a new kitten so I am not getting much sleep lately.

Yep.

I thought if I didn't mention NaBloPoMo, maybe I wouldn't jinx it and maybe I'd remember to post everyday, or at least not forget to post on the very second day of the month. Nope.

I Will Call This "New Post"

Not sure what I want to write for this first post of the month. Just sitting here in pain from over doing it yesterday cleaning my room. I'm watching "Mr. And Mrs. Smith." Haven't seen it since I saw it at the movies. Hilarious! Now that I'm recovering from yesterday, Charley is taking his turn at the room. Apparently I take all of my stressors and soak them into my body. I wish I knew how to release them.

Ugh

Why?? Why do I forget about NaBloPoMo on the very second day?? And of course, once I forget that, is there any point trying to continue? Okay, sure, I might do the occasional blog post this month, but I guess I don't see any point in making the daily effort.

My daughter went to a slumber party, so my husband and I went out to dinner and a movie. We saw Source Code with Jake Gyllenhaal. We thought it was fantastic and will be a catalyst for many interesting theoretical discussions.  We ate at Lucille's Smokehouse BBQ. The food was delicious. Too delicious. When we got home, we writhed on the bed groaning, "Why?...Why?...Why?" This was April 2nd and I still hadn't thought about NaBloPoMo despite my post on April 1st.

The next morning we picked up our daughter, had an early lunch at Denny's then drove down to San Diego --Coronado Island actually and rented a bicycle surrey at the Coronado Ferry Landing and pedaled around a little bike path a little bit past the bridge and then back to the Bikes and Beyond shop.  This is basically what it looked like:

After that, we had a snack at the Coronado Cupcakery. I had a Black Bottom Betty:

which was DELICIOUS!!  Here is the description: Chocolate cupcake with cheesecake and chocolate chips baked into it and cream cheese frosting. It was so moist and flavorful!  Charley and Ceana shared a Coconut Carla:

I didn't taste that so I can't say how it was, but Charley ate the whole thing. Ceana actually didn't share much of it because she thought it was too sweet and just had the muffin (we aren't sure what kind of muffin, but she finished almost the whole thing and it was pretty big.)

After that, we went to Seaport Village, had dinner at Marion's Fish Market. Charley and I had the Two Fish Tacos Combo --meaning it came with a choice of soup. I had the clam chowder and Charley had the seafood gumbo. Ceana got the kid's meal of popcorn shrimp and chips. The fish tacos weren't the best I've ever had, but not the worst. The clam chowder was very tasty. I'd go there again just for the clam chowder.

Then Ceana and I made our way to shops that I wanted to visit. The first stop was The Mugger. Ceana got the Joe Cool mug:

And I got the Beatles Anthology mug:

I also wanted the Yellow Submarine mug: 

 but we still had two more shops to visit....

So off we went to The Upstart Crow. This is my most favorite shop in Seaport Village. This shop makes me want to move walking distance to the village just so I can go here daily. Ceana got one of the "Diary of a Wimpy Kid" books that she hasn't read yet, some gum that contained Shakespearian insults inside the little boxes they in which they were packaged, and pad with a form to fill out that says "I Tried It!" to record new things she has tried.

I got "The Collected Poems of Sylvia Plath" and I bought Charley the book, "This is Your Brain on Music."

   

Finally, we went to the California Candle Gallery. They don't have a webpage but the woman making the candles (Angie) does beautiful work. We bought a small candle for $15. The large ones are $25, but I figured we'd already overspent for the day. Here are a couple of pics of Ceana's candle:

Until next time!

Should I Even Say It?

Though I did better with NaBloPoMo last month than I have in a long time, I still failed to post something on my blog every day in March. There was no excuse for this since I can even post from my phone by sending a text. The only solution is to keep trying it every month until I succeed and then continue to continue....

I'm watching Rachel Ray right now while I type, so I will try to not worry that I'm feeling too distracted right now to come up with anything to write about. Later this month, maybe even tomorrow I'll be writing about our trip to Disneyland and California Adventure.
Cheers!

Commenting on Christine Fonseca's Blog

Today, I made a comment to Christine Fonseca's blog post. The comment turned into more of a blog post itself and in my own frenetic way, going from the topic of P.O.V. and writing tense, to Jonathan Franzen's writing style, I thought it a great example of a Manic Meandering:

When I am reading a novel I prefer past tense. Present tense to me, is for story pitches like for a screenplay or a TV script, etc. –just the pitch, mind you, not the actual material. I remember us talking about this when Temecula Valley Writer Group was more active –a lot of YA books are present tense and it has to do with building suspense because you can’t know whether the character is going to die or not since it is all happening as you read it. If the story is told in first person, I can see this, though I feel like there can still be plenty of suspense even when told in first person past tense –the reader may know that the narrator isn’t going to die (unless they are speaking from the great beyond…) but there are plenty of other characters who could die. (yay!)

However, if a story is being told third person, past tense, ANYONE can die! The main character, ANYONE! So I am still unsure why it is so popular for YA novels to be in first person present tense.
***SPOILER ALERT***
In Barbara Kingsolver’s “The Poisonwood Bible,” the story is told in first person by several different characters. ***SPOILER ALERT*** one of these characters dies, so this character is simply not a narrator anymore, and the others go on with the rest of the story.

I have no preference between first person or third person when I am reading a novel. It depends on which fits better with the story and I really have no rules about that. I don’t recall reading something and thinking, “This would have been better in third person…this would have been better in first person.” I have heard there is some “literary rule” that says that it is better to write a story in third person unless you are a very experienced writer. I’m not sure why that is (maybe if I was a more experienced writer, I would know…), but I try to follow it anyway: Perhaps because of my lack of college education, and my lack of ever getting paid for writing anything, I tend to cast aspersions on my own writing experience. Oddly enough, some of my favorite novels have either been in first person: Jonathan Safran Foer’s “Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close” and the above mentioned “Poisonwood Bible,” Or they have been in letter format: Jonathan Safran Foer’s “Everything is Illuminated” and Stephan Chbosky’s “The Perks of Being a Wallflower,” which has the feel of first person because the people in the letters ARE speaking in first person.

How do I decide whether to tell a story in first or third person? If it is my OWN story about something that happened to ME, first person (I guess that’s kind of obvious) –unless I want to fictionalize it, then third person. If I started to write a novel or short story in third person and it seemed like telling it from one or more character’s first person P.O.V. then I will go back and re-write/write it that way.

I like to tell a story in third person from the P.O.V. of many different characters. I either dedicate an entire chapter to a new P.O.V. or I will make a page break if the P.O.V. changes in the middle of a chapter. Either way, I want it to be clear –unlike Jonathan Franzen’s “The Twenty-Seventh City,” where he has character P.O.V. and location changes right in the middle of a paragraph with little to no segues! I swear, if I had been reading the paperback version and not from my Nook, I would have thrown that book across the room several times! Fortunately, (for him and for us) Franzen’s style has improved over the years.

Blog Party!

I am "meeting" so many writers today! A writer, Carolina Valdez Miller in my friend's (Christine Fonseca) blog chain just signed with an agent!! There is a long list of blogging writers who are helping her to celebrate by giving away a bunch of great swag! Visit Carolina's site or Christine's site to learn more.

Busy reading the Bar Karma website and thinking about helping develop an episode. Www.currenttv.barkarma.com

Just Stuff

Watching Bobby Flay's Ireland. Makes me want to go to cooking school. In Ireland. We had stir-fry tonight. Amanda made it under duress.  She didn't put enough veggies in it. Like barely any. Ugh. The flavor was good though. She did a good job with the chow mien noodles. A Kohl's commercial is on. I feel like they are a more expensive version of Mervyn's. I miss Mervyn's.  I wish it would come back, but it won't. It has gone the way of The Broadway, Bullock's, Robinson's, May Company. At our mall we only have J.C. Penny, Sears and Macy's. The Macy's Men, Children and Home store is where our original Macy's was and the Macy's Women is where our Robinson's May Co. used to be.

This woman is boiling the potatoes in sea water!

Awww, he brought his 14-year-old daughter, Sophie.  He just made her eat some blood pudding. She was like, "Eww!" She tried it though --she nibbled it, but was not impressed.

Charley is making a big project out of cleaning out Nick's room. Getting things in boxes for him, etc. He has found a lot of things we all thought were long lost--like a lot of his tools and dishes, cups, mugs, flatware...

After I post this, I will probably either go back to playing mahjongg online while watching Bobby Flay, or maybe I'll knit while watching Bobby Flay.

Late But Ontime

Another late post. Posting from my phone so it won't have a title till i get online in the morning. My youngest was home sick with a high fever and had been throwing up in the early morning hours. I've been spending most of the day working on a hat for my sis-in-law. Kind of a complicated pattern so it's been frustrating at times. Watching "Fringe" now.

Fail....

Is it too late to post for it to count?? Yikes. I just now remembered!

Whew!

Starting this at 11:14pm on March 9! It suddenly occurred to me I hadn't posted anything for today. Last night --actually, early this morning around 1am, I was tossing my cookies. About 4 separate times. Still felt shaky most of today, but gradually worked my way up the food chain throughout the day so I'm hopeful that I'll feel better tomorrow. I guess we'll see...


I'll let you know!

Ewww

The only comment I have for today is that I am tired of my cat lying here all day passing silent but deadlies.

Charlie Sheen Is Awesome!

I really like Charlie Sheen. I'm not a CS worshiper or anything. I have no aspirations to become one of his goddesses by any stretch of the imagination. I have my own Charley for whom I am a goddess. I do think that Sheen is a frustrated gifted adult who at one time was a gifted child. At least that is what I see in him when I watch his interviews and his live streaming TV program on the internet. Sure, he comes off as a bit self absorbed, but so what? He's being real, being himself, not pretending to be something he isn't just to win over public appeal. I love watching him mess with the media people. I'm staying tuned to see how this all plays out. 


On another related note --his book of poetry, A Peace of My Mind came out way back in 1999. I remember him on a talk show reading from it and I thought, "Wow, that's actually quite good! I'm going to pick up a copy of that."  And then I never got around to it.  Now that he is promoting it again, I want to pick it up, but now if I go out and get it, I'm worried I'm going to be perceived as only now jumping on the bandwagon. Maybe I should take a cue from Charlie and just get it because I want it and forget about what other people think.

Cool Tunes

Just got back from a friend's anniversary party and enjoyed some good music! Ron and Kathy Kempton were the honorees and Ron was the main vocalist and lead guitar. Devon Eisenbarger from Soul Missive is the female vocalist and guitarist. I don't know the name of the guy on the left. The video was taken by my husband using my Motorola Flipside, so sorry for the shakiness and the poor picture quality.

Can't Write Right Now

I can't write right now. I want to, but I can't. It's not that I don't have anything to say, I mean I loved the writing prompts at CHPerc, but here I am, sitting on my bed, typing away at the computer. I look up and there is a giant wall mirror facing me. We have an "open" room design so there is just this archway that separates the main part of the master bedroom from the bathroom area. I look up and see myself and I see my husband leaning back on the bed. He is closing his eyes, but I know he is wondering if we are going to have our appointment tonight or not. So I'm kind of feeling the pressure of that and it's making it hard to concentrate on writing. 


As I was typing out that last bit, he got up and got out his laptop and now he is getting on his computer, so I guess some of the pressure is off. It isn't that I don't want to fulfill our appointment, it's just that I want to get my writing in. I really wanted to write a little fiction piece that would incorporate one of the prompts from today. Now that he is on his computer, all I can think about is getting back to my book....it's a collection of essays by Jonathan Franzen.  It's called, "How to be Alone." I just started reading it on my Nook. After I read "The Corrections," I was going to take a break from Franzen and read "Fight Club," but I ended up loving it so much that I wanted to read more of his work. Maybe I'll just finish all the Franzen in my library before I move on to "Fight Club."


I was finishing up with reading "The Corrections" all day today which is why I didn't post anything earlier --when I would have been able to concentrate better --although, come to think of it, maybe I'd just be thinking about how I want to finish my book and not be able to concentrate on writing anyway.   Once I finished it, it was time to go to the movies. My older daughter and her boyfriend took my younger daughter and her friend to see "Rango." My husband and I went to see "The Adjustment Bureau" which was amazing! And then at the end of the film it says that it was based on a short story called "The Adjustment Team" by Philip K. Dick! I love him! Now I must read that story!


I am getting itchy to read the postings in my CHPercolators group, so see ya tomorrow!

Too Tired To Write

I am just freewriting at the moment. Too tired to come up with a story to write and wanting too much to continue reading my Jonathan Franzen novel (no, not "Freedom," "The Corrections").  My youngest is having a friend over for the weekend two rowdy, silly 10-year-old girls.  Over the weekend, the plan is to see "Rango" (for the girls) and "The Adjustment Bureau" for my husband and me.  Laundry must me done, but my tennis elbow says "No!"  Also, we have an anniversary party to attend that I really don't want to attend. Maybe I'll get a migraine? No, I guess not. I'm just having a surge of my "agoraphobia" I guess.  I'm feeling very impatient about writing at the moment. I can't wait to stop and either get back to the book I'm reading or get back to playing Mahjongg online.

No Worries

"Adelaide Simpson?" The petite dark-haired woman carried a clipboard and looked around the room for movement.

"That's me," a heavy-set woman with fair skin used her arms as leverage on the arm rests of the chair to push herself out of her seat. She hooked her arm through the handles of her purse, then did the same with a different purse that had yarn and knitting needles peeking out of the top. Finally, she looked around and under her seat, picked up a water bottle that still had chunks of ice in it and beads of condensation all over and walked toward the woman with the clipboard.

"My office is just down this hallway and around the corner here," said the woman with the clipboard, "Oh, and I'm Muriel Farmer," Muriel held out her hand as she continued down the hall. Adelaide gave a small congenial smile, switch her bags to her left arm and met her handshake. "Just have a seat anywhere," as they entered the office, Muriel nodded her head toward a couch and a couple of chairs on the left. Muriel sat behind the standard metal office desk on the right and looked over the intake form on the clipboard that Adelaide had filled out when she arrived. Muriel smiled pleasantly and looked up at the woman sitting across from her on the chair, "So how did you hear about us?"

"My friend, Sandy Mirkel recommended it to me when I told her about my situation."

"That name doesn't ring a bell with me, but perhaps she worked with one of our other specialists. I see here, your husband's name is Jeff and he works at Downey and Downey, LLC?"

"Yes, he's up for partner review in the spring." 

Muriel raised her eyebrows, "I see. So if he makes partner, I assume he'll be spending more time at work?"

"Well, actually, he'll get two weeks off before he starts as a partner. He says he should actually be able to spend more time at home since he'll be able to delegate work to the associates and the paralegals…" Adelaide's voice trailed off.

"But you have your doubts?"

"I just keep thinking he'll continue to find reasons to stay away from the house or lock himself in our office at home until late at night and then he leaves before the sun is up. I don't know how he seems to get by on so little sleep."

"In your intake form here, you only checked `Irons his own clothes' for what he does to help around the house."

"He says I don't do it the way he likes it, so he has to do that himself."

"Okay…he doesn't work in the yard? Or do you not have a yard?"

"We have a guy that comes by once a week and mows the grass and trims and stuff like that."

"And have you asked him to help more around the house?"

"Sometimes I've asked him to help with dishes or help me fold laundry on the weekends, but he just says that since he works so many hours during the week, he wants to relax when he gets home and that I should be able to take care of all that since I'm home with the kids all day."

"I think I have the basic idea. It looks like you've filled out the forms completely. I just have some papers for you to sign and then we'll be done here." Muriel opened her file drawer and pulled out three forms. "Just sign at the places indicated."

Adelaide skimmed over the papers, signed all three and handed them back. Muriel stood up and held out her hand. "Thank you very much for coming in Mrs. Simpson. We have a 30-day money back guarantee and you should expect to see results by the end of the week unless any unforseen occurrences arise, in which case, we will contact you immediately."

Adelaide stood up uncertainly. "That's it? You don't need any more information than that?"

"That's it. You gave us everything we need and our specialists will do the rest. You won't have to worry about it."

Bad Kitty

(My nine-year-old daughter drew this in Paint.)


We have two 10-year-old cats. Actually, they might be 11 by now. Snickers, the Bombay is soft and black and used to look like a miniature panther in her younger years. She has a condition where her hips dislocate which makes her limp along and not want to get as much exercise as she used to. As I type this, she trying to soften up my Nook case so she can use it as a pillow. She is the good kitty --unless she decides the the cat box is optional when it comes time for her to remove the solid waste from her bowels. Recently, we purchased a "self-cleaning" cat box so this has been much less of an issue. Now one might think that finding cat poop in places other than the cat box would be worse than finding cat pee in places other than the cat box. One would be so very, very wrong.

This brings me to Max. Max is a gray and brown tabby. In recent years he gradually decided that the cat box was only for bowel movements, but the rest of the house, especially clothing was the best place to urinate. Now Max had long since been neutered so it wasn't an issue of him needing to spray every where. At first, we tried to make sure the litter box was pristine, and even then it wasn't so bad because he was mainly going on dirty laundry that hadn't made it to the hamper, so we could simply wash the clothes, throwing in a splash of Pine-sol for odor control.

We gave him some leeway since he was getting older and he didn't have that same spring in his step that he used to have when he was younger. I could go into more detail about how our house always seemed to smell slightly of cat pee due to our wall to wall carpeting (except in the kitchen and a small section of the bathrooms). The cat box was kept in the office, but sometimes they would slightly miss and, well, you know.

In June of last year I inherited some money from my grandma. We decided ("we," meaning, "me.") That we would use the money to re-paint and re-floor our almost eleven year old house that had not seen a new coat of paint or new flooring since it was built in 1999. Now, not only do we no longer have a single white wall in the house, but every last bit of floor with the exception of the office has vinyl plank flooring which looks like dark stained wood flooring. The office now has commercial carpeting and is a cat-free zone. We hoped the lack of carpet would dissuade Max from peeing outside the box, but it did not. At least now when he missed it was on the much easier to clean vinyl floor.

Then we got new furniture for the family room. An over sized rocker-recliner, a love seat that reclines in both seats and a sofa that doesn't recline, but it can used for reclining ;-) All in matching dark brown micro fiber that has a suede look to it. We were fools. Because Max had not peed on the sectional sofa we used to have in the family room, we thought we were safe. Sadly, Max felt the need to christen the sofa the very
first night we got it. We bought special odor control cleaner from the pet store and that seemed to help. We were still giving Max some leeway because we figured he probably peed there because he had already been up there sleeping and was too stiff to jump down and walk to the cat box.

Then one day, my husband was out in family room as he watched Max jump up on the sofa and the jump to the top of the back rest of the sofa. He didn't think much about it at first because Max often liked to drape himself across the backs of couches and large stuffed chairs. Then he realized Max wasn't lying down. Max was peeing on the top of the couch! He actually made a special deliberate attempt to get to the top of the couch so he could relieve himself right there! That was the day when Max went from being a parttime outdoor cat to being a full time outdoor cat. He now has his own catbox and food and water set up in our garage, along with two different "hidey-hole" places for him to sleep. During the day we keep the garage door open a crack so he can come and go as he pleases.

He isn't allowed in the house unless he is under very close supervision. Today, I came home from helping out in my younger daughter's 4th grade class, went to my room and turned around to find that Snickers had snuck up behind me and was standing by her water bowl that we keep in our bathroom giving me "that look." So I refilled her water bowl and continued to go about my business when I suddenly realized there was another "cat presence" nearby. I peeked through the crack of my almost closed bedroom door, and
there was Max, just sitting there, looking up at me. I opened the door wider and said, "Max, what are you doing in here?"

"Nevermind that," Max replied, "I need to show you something! Come on! Follow me!"

So I followed him down the hall toward the kitchen.

"Are you coming? Come on!"

"I'm coming! Yeesh!"

Max stopped in front of the food and water dish that was now supposed to be solely for Snickers and said, "Look at this! There is hardly any food in this bowl and NONE of it is canned food! Also, the water bowl could use a bit of refreshing as I noticed there is a microscopic speck of dust in it." He then proceeded to make his eyes become rounder and larger than normal so that my abilty to pick him up and put him back outside would be hampered. Because of this tactic, I was forced to refill the food bowl with dry cat food and then found another bowl and poured some of his wet food into it, which he greatly appreciated.

I refilled the water bowl and while he was busy eating I did some detective work to try and figure out how Max managed to get inside. After a little bit of texting, I found out that my 19 year old daughter had forgotten to let the cat out (I didn't even know she had let him in) before she left for her environmental science class.

Since Max was still busy eating, I decided I'd better keep an eye on him, so I grabbed my water bottle, my Nook, and my phone and sat down on the family room couch. I ended up using my phone to post this because I didn't want to bring my computer out here. As I am typing this, Max is currently curled up
on the recliner looking very content.

NaBloPoMo and Percopotomus

In my Yahoo! Group writing group, Coffee House Percolators which is an offshoot of www.coffeehouseforwriters.com, we are doing a ten day writing marathon which we have named "Percopotomus." It began on February 22.  I am also participating in National Blog Posting Month. Again. I am hoping that the momentum I built up participating in Percopotomus will help me to finally write something all thirty-one days in March.


One of the writing prompts for today was: The humble bumble bee. So I wrote a somewhat lame poem:


Yeah, I know some of the rhyming is a bit of stretch...

Trumble the humble bumble bee
Buzzed from flower to flower by the sea

Whether it was cloudy or it was sunny
So he could make some first rate honey

Then one day
To his dismay

He found a flower with no pollen
Leaving Trumble quite crest-fallen

He did not know it was made of plastic
Which Susie MacDougal thought was fantastic

Because they helped her allergies
by not sneezing from flowers nor getting stung by bees.

Addicted to Pandora

I've been having fun playing with Pandora on my NookColor. I've wanted Pandora on a mobile device ever since my daughter was using it on her dearly departed iPhone. Yes, I played with it on my computer, but for some reason, having it on the laptop didn't stick. Same thing with being able to read eBooks on my laptop. It's just better when I use my nook. Here are my stations so far:

The Beatles Radio
Monty Python Radio
The Eagles Radio
The Fratellis Radio
Mumford & Sons Radio
The Decemberists Radio
Billy Joel Radio
Guns N' Roses Radio
Green Day Radio
Jason Mraz Radio
Ludo Radio
Bruce Springsteen Radio
Leonard Cohen Radio
Elton John Radio
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart Radio
Ella Fitzgerald Radio
Dave Brubeck Radio
Rent Radio (As in the motion picture soundtrack)
Alanis Morissette Radio
Meredith Brooks Radio
Irish Drinking Song Radio
Celtic Thunder Radio
Michael Buble Radio
Little Shop of Horrors: The New Broadway Cast Radio
The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee Radio
Bo Burnham Radio
Rilo Kiley Radio

Yeah, I know there are a lot of redundancies, but that's what happens when you run out of skips but still want to listen to the same type of music but also don't particularly feel like listening to the current selection.

nooknooknooknooknook

Yep, that is why I haven't been as diligent with keeping up with every day posting as I had planned. Actually, I had hoped to post this with my nook, but I could only get as far as the title. I couldn't type in the "compose" box. I love my nook. It's a nook color, actually, and even though it doesn't have that technology where it's like reading a regular book, it doesn't seem to put any more strain on my eyes than reading a regular book. I would love to go on and on, but I think B&N would owe me some money, ha ha!

Whoopsy!

Well, I'm just going to keep going with NaBloPoMo even though I skipped yesterday. Maybe if I get in the habit, I'll do better next month? Yesterday was the TGIO party for NaNoWriMo. We had it at the Coffee Depot in Downtown Riverside. It was so much fun! Everyone either read selections from their novels or discussed the plot of their novel. Some shared how NaNoWriMo was life changing for them. We cheered the winners and gave solace to those of us who did not reach our 50,000 words. If any of you from this group are reading this, I just want to say that you all totally rock!

Bread, Glass, Beach

The Leonard family minus the teenagers will be heading off in my 

to first go to Dudley's Bakery in Santa Ysabel. I think some fruit bars, sourdough, and rosemary bread will be on our shopping list. From there we will be going to Liquid Glass Co. which is part owned and operated by a guy with whom my husband went to school. If we have time, after that, we hope to make it to La Jolla Shores or Cuvier Park where we got married to watch the sunset. It will kind of be like a date...except that we'll have our nine-and-a-half-year-old daughter with us....

My Morning

I am typing this while watching a recorded episode of "Burn Notice" so if it seems a bit rambling and a lot a of typos, that is my explanation. Walked my daughter to school with my husband so we could watch her get her GOLD Honor roll award.

We had to walk - a 25 minute walk - because there was a problem with our car insurance and we wouldn't be covered from midnight last night until our insurance company opened and we could call and make the rest of our payment. My husband, Charley, had to carry our daughter's poster board volcano report. (She got an "A") Before the 4th grade awards assembly, we had to sit through the Friday Spirit Assembly.  On the way home, we stopped by the Green Bean Coffee shop and had a coffee and pumpkin bread while Charley called the insurance company. Once insured, we called our older daughter, Amanda, and had her come pick us up at the coffee shop.

I would like to mention that I am very glad I remembered to post today. I almost shut down my computer because I was so tired! Whew!

Danger Girl??

The NaBloPoMo writing prompt is: What's the most dangerous thing you've ever done?

I really need to think about this. The first thing I that came to mind was rollercoasters, but really, I don't think of them as dangerous. Thrilling, maybe, dangerous, no.  There were a couple of times where I was in danger as a child, though it was never my intent to be in danger. I will tell you about those and you can decide.

When I was around three-years-old I was at my grandparents. I was inside of their car and my parents and aunt and uncle were washing the car. My grandparents lived at the top of this very steep hill. Can you already see where this is going? So I was messing around with the things on the dashboard and turning the steering wheel and somehow I have managed not only to disengage the emergency brake, but I also took the car out of park and it started going down the hill. Everyone was screaming and trying to stop the car with their bodies. Fortunately, the way it had been parked it ended up not going very far or very fast until it hit a  little curb surrounding my grandparent's landscape. The car went up the curb and was stopped by a bush. My grandma was angry with the adults. I did not get in trouble. A bonus of being three.

When I was around four, I was in my grandparents' swimming pool. Yes, the same grandparents where the runaway car incident happened. My grandpa was on pool duty keeping an eye on me from a lawn chair on his patio. I was doing my usual trick of holding on to the edge of the pool with my hands and pushing my feet against the wall of the pool so I could scoot myself around the perimeter of the pool.   Somehow, I managed to push myself far away enough from the edge that I couldn't doggie paddle back and I sunk like a rock. There I was, flailing in an attempt to reach the surface when all of a sudden there's my grandpa under the water with all of his clothes on including his glasses! Grandpa saved me! There was a funny (sort of) story to tell when the rest of the relatives got there for dinner that night.

So that is about it, unless you want to count the times I went off-campus for lunch with my boyfriend (we were allowed to go off-campus for lunch, but my mom didn't want me to. The boyfriend did not go to my school and had already graduated) and went somewhere to make out. Nothing happened beyond that, but I very much was NOT supposed to have done that, and one time I was so late for my next class that there was only fifteen minutes left, but I went anyway because I didn't want it to be a blatant cut. If you are marked tardy, they don't say how tardy you are.


You could also count the time that I dated this guy whom I will only refer to as "psycho-boy." Really, he was a man, but I'm trying to keep things light here and "psycho-man" seems to have a slightly heavier ring to it. In the interest of keeping things light, I will only mention that there were midnight drunken phone calls (from him), I would come out in the morning to find my tires slashed on more than one occasion, sugar in my gas tank (which does nothing, by the way), and crazy glue in the keyholes of my car (which also doesn't do much because it's pretty easy to just jab your key right through that).  This was from an almost 40-year-old man.

So you decide-- my joy ride? The near drowning? sneaking off with my boyfriend? or dating a clearly unstable person?

 

 

NaBloPoMo Day ONE

The theme this month is ZEITGEIST

 Today, I'm going to use the writing prompt on the nablopomo site and see how it can tie in with the theme for the month. The prompt for today is: If you could stop your body from aging at any point in your life, what age would you want to stay at and why?


That one was easy for me. Of course I would have to go back in time to do this, but I would pick 27. I had already had my twins, but my body was in the best shape it had ever been in. Of course this is about aging, so even if I had been overweight, I don't think the premise of the prompt would preclude the ability to lose weight. At 27, I'd still be able to take the pounds off fairly easily. 

Today, and really even in the past several decades, there has been a shift toward desiring to maintain one's youth. Plastic surgery, collagen injections, Botox injections, dermabrasions,  and now, shaving the pubes! Or waxing (!!) 

I could go on about this, but I have to eat lunch so that my food will be properly digested and I won't have to get up and go to the bathroom during my daughter's spelling bee today!

NaNoWriMo Fail and NaBloPoMo attempt

Okay, so I got just under 8,000 words this year. Pitiful. But I had fun anyway. So I'm going to take another attempt at National Blog Posting Month. Beginning December 1st, (actually, beginning today, since I'm posting today and tomorrow is the 1st) I'm going to attempt to make a blog post everyday....See you tomorrow!

NaNoProMo

It's National Novel Writing Month, or NaNoWriMo, though as one friend calls it, "NaNoProMo" National Novel Procrastination Month. We are one day past the half way point and I am not even a quarter of the way done. I'm not even quite an eighth of the way done, but I have confidence that barring a power outage, I'll get past that "hurdle" by the end of the evening. I am also Municipal Liaison for the first time, and let me assure you, my ML duties have in no way intruded upon my word count. I just have such ADD that I feel like I have to check this out, and this and this, and on the Office of Letters and Light Blog I found this amazing post about a wrimo (that's we NaNoWriMo participants are called) who is writing her novel from Antarctica! There was a link to her blog, so of course I had to go there and go all the way back to the beginning of her blog where she is beginning her Antarctic journey! This is only one example of how I am procrastinating. Writing this post is another. And when I publish this post and log off, I'll go to Facebook and see if there is any important information from any of my friends or relatives that has been posted.

The Scenic Route

I was visiting Christine Fonseca's blog today. I became so enamored of my comment to her post (actually a post of a post) that I decided to re-post here.

Hmmmm….I can relate to Benoit. I think that has been me for much of my life. Or maybe I just wanted my journey to go the scenic route? VERY scenic? I turned 44 today and never became the if-not-famous-then-at-least-self-supporting actor I wanted to be. I never did even get so much as a bachelor’s degree in anything. The most writing I ever do is during NaNoWriMo. It has taken me 10 years of doing that to finally realize that my writing does not completely suck–not that I consciously thought that, or why would I bother writing at all? But why on earth would I think it was good enough for publication? And why on earth did I have to decide to choose preferred professions that are so difficult to earn a living solely on that profession alone? So I dropped the acting aspirations in favor of motherhood, and put the writing in a semi-holding pattern….and now that I am in my mid-forties, am I too old to think I could ever be a published fiction writer–I mean other than on lulu or create-space or a blog….

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NaNoWriMo 2010

This is the 10th(?) year that I've participated in NaNoWriMo . Last year was the first year I "won."  I am Municipal Liaison for my region for the first time ever because our former ML moved out of the area. I feel like I'm doing grown up things! I guess it's about time, since I'm almost 44, I have 3 kids, two of whom are almost 20...so I guess I've been a grown-up for a while....

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