Made some progress on this scarf today. Almost doubled its length! I hope to finish it by Oct. 31. I even went so far as to look into what my next knitting project will be. It's going to be a beret! And if I can find it to buy, it'll be in a lovely Malabrigo chunky yarn of their color "Paris nights" (big surprise, eh?). Looks like the first few things I knit are going to be for me. My skill ain't so smooth yet. Practice, practice...

My poor Adams cat has a hurty foot. We applied neosporin and wrapped gauze around it last night and were surprised that it took him to this morning to pull the bandage off. Unfortunately, the hurty looked worse this morning. It's all raw between two toes. I finally bit the bullet and we took him to the vet at 4. Poor guy. He has somehow sliced the hide off the inner side of one toe pad. The doctor cleaned it and applied medicine and wrapped his foot again, and gave him a rabies shot (overdue, but I don't worry 'cause my cats are not allowed outside. EVER.) But oh y goodness, is Adams peeved.



This is a very odd place for him to pout. It's right by the front door. The cats never hang out in that particular spot. But maybe he's just tired after his ordeal. We have to poke a pill down him twice a day, too. Oh, boy, will that be fun.

So, I finally got the scarf frogged (heh heh, that's knitter's-speak for "unraveled") last night, and got the first repeat of six rows put on the needle. Then at lunch today I did another repeat, and on the way home another one. So 18 rows! And they're all perfect! Yay! No odd unexplainable gaps, no extra or missing stitches when I count them at the end of the rows...I think I'm making progress. I'll have to post a picture a little later, my camera battery has to recharge. Not that it looks all that different from the first version, lol.

So here it is Saturday again, and I've been a non-smoker for almost 8 days. The patch makes it pretty easy, actually. I wonder how hard it is to get off the *patch*. I'll find out eventually. That will be a good day, when I don't have to mess with that any more. Not that it's complicated or difficult. Just a nuisance.

My life is so exciting. Today I'm performing the Autumn Bathroom Change-out ritual. lol - thrilling, no? Putting away the Paris Bathroom, good-bye until next July 14th.

And I will later rip out ALL the rows I've done on the scarf I started 8 days ago. Too many mistakes, too many holes. I want to re-learn knitting *correctly* and part of that is NOT being satisfied with second-best. Particularly if I'm going to be using "real" yarns - wool, alpaca, you know, the animal fibers. No more synthetic yarns for me. I've seen the light and will sin no more (in that way).

And after I do a few more chores, and loads of laundry, I'm going to knit for awhile, and then I'm going to read. For several hours if I can swing it. I love reading. Don't do near enough of it.

I'm a pretty boring person, when I'm not bustin' the high adventure decorating the bathroom. Woo hoo!

ETA: Oh yeah, I said I'd post photos of the French dinner from Sunday. Here ya go:







The Volailles de Veronique, Salade de mesclun, and Ratatouille. Unfortunately we didn't get pictures of the creme brulee (without the brulee) and Madeleines. We had store-bought bake & serve French bread but I figure you know what that looks like.

Starting Day Four of being a non-smoker. It hasn't been too bad. Just a few urges, quickly left behind. Of course, my Victorian/Lutheran ethic tells me I'm cheating, using the patch, but pbbt on the ol' V/L crap. Whatever it takes.

The usual good effects of quitting have started appearing: my lingering chesty cough from the last cold (a month ago?) is going away (DUH). My mouth, for the first time this morning, doesn't taste like a used ash tray. Laissez le bon temps roule!

I worked on the scarf for a couple patterns (12 rows) last night. It's turning out to be my usual cavalacade of hilarity. I have magic stitches that disappear and re-appear, doubled on random rows. I swear, I counted EVERY STITCH on the last six rows, made sure I had 24 when I should have had 23; so knit two together; then the end of the next row I'd have only 22. *cue sound of hair being ripped out by roots* So I have no idea what this thing is going to end up looking like. A very bumbledy-looking scarf, I guess:



I need to finish it by Oct. 31, as I've "entered" a Ravelry Malabrigo Group "You Can Do It!" contest (you just say on the group board you're going to do it, and you're entered. Very informal. And Malabrigo has put up yarn & stuff as prizes!) Wish me luck - the ONLY category I have a prayer for is Most Improved, LOL - starting with 20-year-old rusty knitting skills means ALL progress is upward.

My Celebrate Paris week is officially over now, with a pretty good dinner if I do say so myself, three good friends and several rounds of Mille Bornes none of which did I win. Mostly I put in a poor showing but it's all in the luck of the draw, I tell you! Anyway, I managed to pretty well trash the kitchen but a lot of it's in the dishwasher or the fridge now, so poor RH says he'll work at the rest tomorrow. He took pictures before we dug in so I'll post those when I get them. We had:

Salade du mesclun
Supremes de Volaille Veronique
Ratatouille
French bread

and for dessert: Creme brulee (as it turned out, without the brown sugar crust on top; it didn't appear to have set up properly and I didn't know how putting brown sugar on top and broiling it would end up, so it was more like just custard) and Madeleines. And, it did set up nicely, very creamy and light.

Everyone appeared to like it. And now I'm very, very tired and after a week of eating French food I swear I'm ready for hot dogs and beans and potato chips. Except we have a considerable amount of leftovers.

No knitting tonight; it would be worse than useless for me to try when I'm this tired. However, this is the end of my second day as a non-smoker, and all the work and fussing successfully kept me from missing it. Yay!

Day One of no smoking went pretty well. Had a couple of moments of wanting a cigarette, but they were brief and weak - I *am* wearing the patch, after all. Got started on my scarf. Got a lot of housekeeping done.

This morning we're off to the grocery store, then back here for a little more cleaning and a whole lotta cookin'. It's the culminating day of my Celebrate Paris week, and there'll be four of us at table. Wish me luck.

First snow of the winter. A little early. Hope it dries up and goes away, and the 98% of the leaves in this very leafy neighborhood, fall, before we get the snowfall that sticks around all winter.

It's always so beautiful, the first snow.

So, I'm trying to become a better person. Today (John Lennon's birthday, as it happens) is my last day as a smoker. When I get up in the morning, I'll be a non-smoker. I'm following a program sponsored by my insurance company, gives me a coach, gave me a kit and everything. I've made all kinds of preparations and I've been thinking about it a LOT.

I'm using the Patch, under my Dr's supervision. And, to keep my hands busy these long winter evenings in front of the TV, I'm taking up knitting again. I've become addicted to Ravelry.com, I've bought a skein of yarn and a pair of needles and got a nice scarf pattern from my yarn store. I've been practicing a little on scrap yarn. Visions of wonderful me-made socks, hats, sweaters, arm-warmers and MORE! are dancing in my head. I've started taking better care of my hands so they're not so scratchy (won't catch on the yarn so much).

I'll post updates on the knitting project here (I think it'll mirror on the Ravelry site but I'm not sure) - wish me luck!

In other news, this has been my second Celebrate Paris week, during which I've made French meals each night (except one when I got home from work really late). Tonight it's French onion soup, salad, and French bread. It's been fun and pretty tasty so far. Sunday culminates the week with a little soiree (complete with a game of Mille Bournes) with three friends (I hope I remember to snap photos of the dinner before we eat it), then sometime after that I convert my bathroom decor from Paris to Autumn. All this is to commemorate my week in Paris, this same week in 2007. *sigh*

Does that make me sound all organized and everything? BWAHAHAHAHA! Fooled ya.

I actually started a new short story this week. Havent got far, and what I've got will have to be lopped off for the most part, but it's a start.

I'm wondering what's happening with The Book of Tentacles. Sam's Dot Publishing said they wanted my story "Jar of Peaches" for the antho, and it was supposed to be published this month (after a couple of delays) but I haven't heard anything about it, and no reply to my querying email.?

Getting ready for the family's visit. Boy, do I NEED this vacation.

Over the weekend I finished that dress! I am delighted to have actually finished it - but it won't be making a public debut. The style turns out NOT to be Me. I look like a sack of potatoes in the thing. *sigh* Ah well, it'll make a good housework dress.

Its real value was as a learning exercise. I discovered that by golly, I do remember how to put in a mean zipper! After making every mistake it's possible to make, and ripping out the first zipper I ever tried to install about fifty times, back in junior high school home-ec class, I have never had any trouble with zippers since then. (This is how old I am: back then, girls HAD to take Home Ec, and could not take Shop; boys HAD to take shop, and could not take Home-Ec - which is short for Home Economics, in case you're wondering. Funny that; they never showed us how to balance a checkbook or make up a budget. Damn them.)

I have stacks and stacks of fabric. A friend (male, decidedly NOT a sewing type) inherited several HUNDRED lengths of fabric when his mother died. She had made all her family's clothes, and the trove includes men's suiting fabrics as well as every kind of women's clothing fabrics you can imagine, plus window-dressing and furniture fabrics, and most of them are now "vintage." He's been selling them awfully cheap just to get rid of them. I consider I've done more than my part toward his effort. To the point where I shouldn't have to buy clothes for a decade, actually. But I need to graduate from my training-wheels-level sewing skills.





My next project is another dress, a different fabric and pattern (see above; it'll be the jumper). I'm big into dresses since I discovered they are MUCH cooler in the summer time, specifically when I'm walking the 6 - 8 blocks to my car after work when it's hottest. I've got family visiting in two weeks, so I won't get to it before then. After THAT, the big project: sewing Roman shades for seven windows on my first floor (oh, except one is on the upstairs landing). We kept the drapes that came with the house, being too cheap to replace them, but now (after 16 years) I am thoroughly sick of the ugly, dark old things. I can't WAIT to yank them down and throw them away. I picked Roman shades in a pale blue linen-blend. Roman shades are, theoretically, pretty easy. Before I start I'm going to do Before pictures of the ugly current ones, then After ones once I've finished the shades. I'm itching to get to those shades...

And I need to do some sewing for Christmas presents. Smaller projects that don't require knowing the recipients' sizes.

I have all the sewing equipment I could ever want; I got a lot of my late mom-in-law's sewing stuff. I didn't know there'd been such an explosion of methods of marking fabric - for use with marking paper: the old stapler-type stamp, the teensy pizza-cutter (with dull edge) in both toothed and smooth edges, then there's white pencil, and both purple and turquoise washable-ink felt tip pens. I tried several of those methods on this first dress, and wasn't happy with any of them. I think I'll try tailor's tacks in this next one.



And I have my first self-healing cutting mat and rotary cutter! My goodness, are *those* things neat! I've got at least two (and maybe three, I'm not sure) pinking shears, two regular sewing scissors, several tape measures, and some things I don't even know what they're for. Like, a ruler-type thing that is curved on one side and straight on the other. ??? And I have my little Baby Lock, simple sewing machine with everything I need: variable length straight stitching, zigzag, and a Reverse button. It also has one of those hemming stitches but it didn't work so well for me - it seems turned backwards from the direction *I* would think it should go. I'll work on that. I bought that machine with money earned *writing*! I wrote a regular nature column for a local kids-oriented newsletter, donkey's years ago. I'm still proud of that. :)



And I've bought a ton of patterns at some great sales at Hancock's. So there's really no excuse for me not to go to work on my wardrobe!

I remind myself of this every time I go read The Panopticon. That's knitting, and Mr. Franklin Habit, the blogger, sings a very siren song to me, to get back into knitting. Big-time. But I resist; I have too many other things I need to work on first. Like, the top floor of my house is practically dismantled, furniture-wise, right now, as I try to sell a couple unnecessary and LARGE pieces of furniture to make room for a Major Rearrangement, with Desired Outcome: two nice guest rooms and a LOT less Stuff.

So, anyway, I'm getting back into the Domestic Arts. Don't worry, there is no danger of my turning into Rachel Ray or Martha Stewart. It'll just be *my* version, and I promise to keep it to myself. Sort of like my Paris vacation album. I had fun putting it together, but it's about as far from a present day "scrapbooker" as you can get. And that's fine with me.

Lo! These several months later, and I'm actually working on sewing my first garment in *mumble mumble* years. OK, like, 15 years. It's a dress. A very very simple dress. (View C.) I'm re-making all my newbie mistakes, but it's great because I'm re-learning all that stuff. Nonetheless, this will be a housedress, not to be worn in public. But it's lovely fabric and light and cool, just what I need around the house in the hot, sticky summertime if I'm going to keep my A/C temp setting in the mid-70s, or off altogether. AND: I still know how to put a zipper in on the first try. *polishes nails, looks proud*

Just the facings and the hems to be done yet, and I can start deciding what's next. Whee!

So once again, due to my own denial, lack of planning, what-have-you, I have a disappointment. My plan for today was to do a couple of housework chores then sit down to adjust the simplest blouse pattern I've got, and sew a blouse. I have two books "The Perfect Fit," and "How to Make Sewing Patterns," the latter because it shows with photographs how to measure yourself when you don't have someone to help. I have a tape measure and the pattern, the fabric, the thread, even the interfacing.

So, impatient to imagine ahead, I measured myself for the blouse.

Reality bites.

I'm several inches BIGGER than the biggest size this pattern is meant for. From what I've read of these books, which isn't 100%, this means I'm pretty much going to be starting from scratch - and I'm not at all sure I even have enough of this fabric.

ARGH!!!

So, I can forget about the sewing until I lose about thirty pounds (at least), or I can sit down and really study these books and use this first pattern as my crash course in pattern-making. Well. One thing I can do is to cut out the pattern paper and make a duplicate in newsprint, and use the copy to try out the methods in the book. That would be a step forward.

I remember in junior high when we were learning to sew in Home Ec (and isn't THAT quaint?), when we got to the zipper in a - was it a skirt? or a dress. Can't remember. Anyway, I must have ripped that zipper out twenty times. How I loathed it! Teen impatience, oh my god. But somehow, I stuck with it (maybe I would have flunked if I didn't at least FINISH the goddamned thing) and in the end, I think I had made about every mistake possible when putting in a zipper, and by god, I knew how to put in a zipper. I found in later years that I could put any kind of zipper in any kind of garment and it looked and worked just fine. That was one of those lessons no one could have consoled me with when I was down in the basement sweating, crying, and cursing over that stinking Home Ec assignment. I had to go through it myself, and discover later that it really was worth it. I don't remember what kind of grade I got on the Home Ec garment, probably not very good since it was chewed up pretty good, lol. But it was a skill, a hard-earned one.

So maybe what I have to do is the same thing over adjusting patterns, now. Either that or I've simply moved all that fabric I've got (enough for a full year's worth of new clothes) from one place of storage, to MY place of storage. I really hate that idea. So, it's back to school this afternoon...

I was remembering yesterday some of the clueless things I did in my young adulthood. I smile at my younger self from the vantage point of some 20 - 30 years' experience. I used to get embarrassed thinking about them but now I see, at least they were harmless and well-meant.

I lived on a farmstead in northern Iowa during my first marriage, when my son was a toddler. We had farm cats, and we had an Indoor cat. We fed the farm cats generic cat food in huge brown paper bags from the local farm supply place. The Indoor cat got Purina Cat Chow. It was the early 70's then, and though we lived far, far off the beaten path we did get one UHF (or was that VHF...) TV station from the "big" town twenty miles away, and we read the newspaper and I went to the library all the time, so we were well aware of Earth Day and the environmental movement just in its infancy. One day I fed the Indoor cat the last of one bag of chow and got to looking at the bright, slick bag with its gorgeous cat on the front. I thought, what a waste of paper and beautiful pictures. I sat down and wrote the company a letter congratulating them on their lovely cat food bags and helpfully suggesting they run a contest for the best re-use of the bags. I mailed it (post-box at the end of the long driveway) and then cut up the bag to make a dust cover for a book, and forgot about it. Some time later I got a response! It was a letter from their marketing department thanking me for my interest and enclosing a few coupons for Cat Chow. I don't remember the exact wording of the letter all these years hence, but I do remember the tone of polite bafflement. They regretfully nixed the suggestion of the contest, I do remember that. Ah well, we got a few cents off the next few bags of cat food.

One of the shows we could get on the one TV channel was the Dinah Shore program, the morning one with the now-classic morning-show format: she'd sing a song, there'd be a guest of fame or accomplishment, they'd do some cooking, she'd sing another song, and maybe there'd be a humorous bit with someone bringing their talented pet or children. I watched that show every day. (I remember being very intrigued when Burt Reynolds was the guest; EVERYONE knew they'd been an Item a few years before.) I got the idea that the local TV station needed a local show like that, only environmentally-oriented, and of course hosted by Yours Truly. I spent a few days developing ideas and themes for a bunch of shows. I even made up a list of what I thought would be likely advertisers. THOSE were thin on the ground in an agricultural state in the early 1970s, let me tell you. And I made an appointment with the station manager to discuss it.

I was terrified through the whole conversation. He was polite and kind (though it was obvious he was first and foremost a businessman) but when he asked how they would possibly pay for it, my paltry hand-written list didn't impress him. He of course knew all those vendors in the region and (as I realize now) knew they wouldn't have the slightest interest in footing the bill for an environmental talk show. In the face of the station manager's cold realism, my beautiful idea withered as I sat in his office. I felt like a complete idiot and slunk home to nurse my sore ego. (He did do an interview with me and a couple of other people I'd started a theater group with a few years later. I was on TV! With, of course, no way to record it back then, so I never saw myself. It's no doubt just as well, lol.)

There may be a few other such memories lurking just out of reach in the back of my increasingly rusty memory bank. I think I was naive long after the age I should have got wise to the world. Now I think of it as a baby chick struggling to peck its way out of the shell.

At long last, I can hold my head up and be proud of my country.

Channel-surfing on a break between housecleaning chores, I came across a public access station showing a film of Omaha's recent history. They were interviewing various movers and shakers and wannabes about the Old Market, which started out as a neighborhood of warehouses and manufacturing buildings down by the Missouri River in Omaha's original downtown. My late husband, Bob, was one of the late 1960's "Old Market layabouts"; one particular family had invested in a lot of the area and made cheap warehouse space available to artists and entrepreneurs, and Bob had a photography studio down there, where he lived and worked, amidst many of his friends. Over the years I heard so many stories about their hijinks and escapades. Quite the wild bunch they were, and I know he always felt those were his golden years. I knew some of the people interviewed for this TV film, quite a lot about some of them.There was old footage of hippies hanging out on the curbs, blowing bubbles, and people remodeling some of the old buildings, and working in their little stores. Much of the art that hangs on my walls came from some of those artists, working so bright-eyed and young back then, on the cutting edge of Omaha's embryonic arts culture.

A weird mood has settled on me watching this. So many of those old friends of Bob's have gone now, there must be a great reunion party going on somewhere. The sanitized version Omaha is presenting in this film is not much like the stories I heard. And the weirdness lies in how detached I feel. For a few minutes this living room was filled with voices and faces that Bob knew well - I wouldn't be surprised if he knew everyone in those old home movies - and I wonder what he would have said about it. I'm not sad, exactly. It's the transience of everything filling the room here, I think. This is a sense that's seeping into me more and more since he died. Nothing new or original with me, of course. Just new *to* me.

I'm very discouraged today. I have been purchasing materials and planning to make a line of handmade items to sell on Etsy.com. I don't have a store there yet, because I need to have an inventory first, as well as logo, banner art, business card design, etc. But I've invested a couple hundred dollars so far in materials and equipment to make these things which will be aimed at people who I expect to be at least 21 years old and probably more like 50 or 60.

Anyway, yesterday a discussion erupted on the Etsy forums about a new law (the Consumer Products Safety Improvement Act) that's proposed in Congress that, if applied broadly, apparently will require all of us small business people making handmade items to keep extensive records and reporting capabilities to the Consumer Product Safety Commission, maybe even requiring us to pay for testing of our products. Trouble is that no one - including the CPSC themselves - seems to really know who and what is covered, and what the obligations will be.

Well - this was going to be a fun, part-time way for me to be creative and make some money to maybe do some improvements around my house that my normal budget won't allow. If it's going to turn into a monstrous money pit and bureaucratic nightmare, I don't need it. Of course, there's a lot of concern and agitation going on amongst the Etsy crafters but no one seems to have figured out what it really means. So I'm going to just sit on this idea for awhile - after all, I have enough other projects I could be doing with the time this would have consumed - until the dust settles and the CPSC comes out with their final regulations. It's kind of looking like the bill was written to answer those horrible problems of things like flammable materials used in children's pajamas that were made in foreign lands, lead in toy paint, etc., and the writers were unaware that there is a pretty vast population of self-supporting crafters out here whose businesses would be absolutely crushed if this thing is broadly applied. They'll be hearing from some Etsyans now, that's for sure, and maybe they'll refine the bill's language to avoid that.

But dang, I was looking forward to this little enterprise of mine...

Friday night, yay!

I didn't realize it had been so long since I posted anything here in Blogger. I've been on Live Journal a lot, though.

Haven't written any fiction in months & months, though I think about last year's NaNoWriMo book every day. I just never get around to writing on it. I'm fractured into seventy different directions - work, house, yard, cats, selling my dear husband's photography equipment at APUG.org (which is a user's group concentrated on film photography - no digital there. Those folks are the absolute BEST. They are so helpful and kind, and I've found new homes for quite a bit of hubby's stuff). It's slow, and there is so much other stuff here I need to divest myself of. And I'm getting ready for another enterprise which, when it is launched, I will try to remember to announce here, and which may serve as a little bit of extra income and an outlet for some creative and scavenging instincts I've got. Oh, let's say "recycling" instead of "scavenging."

Anyway, I'm disorganized and frustrated with all this extra stuff around here and how slowly I'm getting rid of it - I got plans, oh boy do I have plans - but I vascillate between beating myself up for being so slow and disorganized, and telling myself, well, Terry, you dummy, you have to live life today, too, you can't just keep pounding yourself over the head with this idea that SOMEDAY when all the extra stuff has been gotten rid of, THEN you can live life. It's a habit of thinking that's plagued me all my adult life. This vascillation is no doubtr at least partly responsible for my disorganization. Talk about a vicious cycle.

OK, I've made a new post. It's not very interesting, I'm afraid - except OH YEAH I'M A GRANDMA!!! The baby arrived exactly on her due date, and I got to go out and spend a week with her and her folks when she was just 9 -15 days old, and I guess I'm not going to top that for excitingness so I'll close this now.

Well, smack my head and call me Grannie.

But wait until after August. That's when my VERY FIRST GRANDCHILD will be arriving!!!

I'm in shock, I think. Geez, this is going to take some getting used to!

This changes everything.

I think.

Trundling right along in my most-recent Grown-up Groove (having fixed the toilet all on my own last weekend), I loaded my lawn mower into my trunk this morning and took it to the mower doctor's place to get all fixed up for the oncoming mowing season. That sucker is heavy! And my rope and knots contraption to keep it from bouncing out of the trunk made the mower-fixer-guy laugh, of course, but who cares.

Then in a paroxysm of Grown-upness, I went & had my car cleaned, inside and out! Woo hoo! And then a roofer came and looked at my roof and told me that the best thing for me to do is to patch the one bad spot and let it go; I have asbestos shingles and it costs $2000 per 100 square feet to dispose of them! gasp! Well, as it should be, I say, that stuff is Not Nice for people to handle, and we shouldn't be just dumping it into landfills or whatever. He also said he'd save any salvageable shingles as he worked (if he gets my business) and wrap them up tight and safe so if I ever had another break, I could use the old ones. You can't buy them any more (of course, and perfectly fine with me) so used ones are going for $25 - 50 apiece on the open market. He won't give me an estimate on the needed repairs until he can get up there and look at the roof, which will be sometime this week. So, now two more roofing guys need to come over and tell me what they think. And when I've picked myself up off the floor, I'll have to decide what to do: go into debt now, or wait & save my money to pay for the work now. Depends on how much it is, of course.

And isn't this Adult World of Grown-Upness exciting? My golly, I'm just all -

Uh, just all -

Um. Well, I wore out that fit of Adultness quick, dint I? Phew.

But I've done a few housey things today, and now I've just subsided into my usual pile of inert So-whatness. It's OK; it's Saturday. Tomorrow is Errands and Chores day. Tonight I can channel surf and jack around doing nuthin' all I like. :^)

I've been posting mainly in Live Journal lately, especially since Speculations Rumor Mill has closed down. A bunch of Rumor Millers have migrated to LJ to huddle together in our bereavement. Someone, bless them, started a LJ Rejection/Acceptance Community that sort-of replaces the RM's. So if you have R/A's you want to post, I suppose the easiest way is to email me and I'll tell you how to join LJ (if you're already registered, my handle there is threeoutside); if you Friend me, and I Friend you back, I think you'll be able to find my Friends list, and the RMers and R/A Community should be accessible through that. (And I must say, I do loathe that verbing of the noun Friend. Just so you know. I use it under protest.)

In other news, I completed the first draft of my first short story of 2008 yesterday. I wrote it for the writer's workshop at WillyCon coming right up the first weekend in April. Jack McDevitt, the Author GoH, will be running the workshop and I'm thrilled and terrified that he'll be reading and critting my story.

Looks like I sold a story to Thaneros! Now, if you look at that word, it's a combination of two Greek words, one meaning Death and the other, well, Eros. So if you've an easily offended sensibility you won't want to be going and looking for this story - or, likely, any other story on that new ezine. But I'm very proud of that story, I think it's one of the best I've ever written, so if you're of a broad-minded nature, by all means when it's published, do read it. And I've a thick skin - let me know what you think of it, if you want to. I'll try to remember to post here when it's online. It's going to be published in three parts, one a week, by the way.

So I'm hoping yesterday's story completion means I'm climbing back onto the writing horse again.

In music news, I downloaded NIN's new four-disc album Ghosts I - IV yesterday, but apparently my old stereo system won't play MP3s, so now I have to invest in some batteries because the ones I scrounged up yesterday didn't have the juice to power my CD player. Bah. It's so frustrating! I do so look forward to hearing Reznor's instrumental music! This set is all instrumentals played with, as usual, by a large cast of his musical friends. Including Adrian Belew (whoa!).

That's about it this time.

Your Score: PORTLAND!

You scored 28% Style, 15% Climate, and 56% Culture!

You are Portland, Oregon! Portland, the largest city in Oregon and seat of Multnomah County, is located in the northwest part of the state on the Willamette River. Portland has a diverse economy with a broad base of manufacturing, distribution, wholesale and retail trade, regional government, and business services. Major manufacturing industries include machinery, electronics, metals, transportation equipment, and lumber and wood products. Technology is a thriving part of Portland's economy, with over 1,700 high-tech companies located in the metropolitan area. Tourism is also important to Portland's economy, drawing more than 7 million visitors annually.You are a nicely cultured individual, appreciating a good play, book, movie, or fine dining. You also appreciate some diversity, lest things get too boring. Not one for sitting and relaxing for long periods at a time nor dressing up the nines, you take interest in getting outside and being out in nature, enjoying the cool, crisp air...maybe even playing a sport or taking a hike. Portland is a good place to be, my friend. My test tracked 3 variables How you compared to other people your age and gender:

You scored higher than 99% on Style

You scored higher than 99% on Climate

You scored higher than 99% on Culture
=======================================================

Portland are Me. I don't get these stats. Which is it, 28% Style, or 99% Style? And what' s Style? *snicker* Knowing myself, the 18% is the right one. Ah well.
...
In other news: only got the NaNo novel up to 24,063 words over the long weekend. Doesn't look like I'm going to get to 50K before November 30, which is ... [checking] ... this Friday. But, I've got a good start and it's got enough substance and potential, I think I'll keep working on it.

19,822 words total last night, about 1938 more than were there the day before. Not keeping up with the minimum daily average needed to win but I still got hopes!

The NaNo experts say Week Two is when you become convinced you're writing pure crap, and they're right. For now, I'm just going for the word count, like Jack Torrance: "All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy." lol

16,711 words as of Friday night - didn't do much yesterday so didn't post anything...

But I've got a cute cat story today.

My cat, Adams, is a burly boy who is constantly on the lookout for the main chance to escape to the great big outside world. He keeps sneaking into the garage through my broken screen door, when I'm not paying close enough attention. His nose is the first to the front door when I come home in the evening, hoping I'll forget he's there and he can get LOOSE and get FREE and feel the WIND in his fur, and have ADVENTURES etc etc etc. Drives me nuts.

Well, today I had a couple of people over here for a project, and when we were done, the two folks were chatting and meandering around between the front door, their cars, and my living room, and I was kind of distracted. At one point while we were all in the front room hashing things over, I stepped over and closed the front door. Not one minute later there was a tremendous CRASH! at the front door. Startled, I looked over just in time to see a big furry body fly up - I mean like four feet off the ground - and throw itself against the storm door with a loud kitty KKKAAAYYYYYYYAAAAHHHH! like a Ninja. In the two seconds it took for me to get to the door, I was confused: was there a neighborhood cat wanting in? Then it happened again! KKKKAAAAYYYAAAAHHH! Thud! and that furry body had thrown itself against the door again. I opened the door, opened the storm door, and was almost knocked off my feet by - none other than Indiana Cat, the dashing Adventurer - Adams, racing back indoors as fast as his kitty feet could carry him.

He'd sneaked out during the back& forth, and I hadn't noticed, and then I'D CLOSED THE DOOR!!!!

The two visitors didn't know my cats, so they were a little puzzled at the extent of my raucous laughter. And I've had a cat-shaped appendage the rest of the afternoon. I guess he wants to make sure I don't get out of his sight again. My big hero cat adventurer. LOL!

12,142 words!

Took Wednesday night off, I was just too exhausted. (Turns out I needed to remove the leveling shims from my bed's frame once I'd rotated and flipped my mattress - that teeny amount of slant was costing me whole nights' sleep! MUCH better now! Make a note: if you're sleeping poorly, check the level of your bed - head to toe and side to side.)

So I needed to write 3334 words last night to catch up. But, I was really tired again and only got 2007 words - which was still a bit above the necessary daily average to "win" NaNo, so I feel somewhat mollified. And, there's a three-day weekend coming up, so I have confidence I'll catch up entirely, and even pull a bit ahead, over the weekend.

Right now this little shrub is growing every whichway but I can go back and prune it later. This gives me lots of potential branches to follow in the next 3 weeks.

Easy night last night - I only needed about 550 words to hit my mark for Day 6, so I was really tired, so that's what I did. Got 'er up to 10, 032 words and called it a night. Back to the daily quota level tonight...

Got 'er up to 9,460 words last night! Whee!

Then looked at my NaNo page and saw that one of my buddies is at 41,000. LOL

Ah well, I'm very happy with my progress so far - I think this is the most I've written for NaNo this early in the month. Must. Keep. Writing!

Came out of the weekend with a total of 7,023 NaNoWriMo words on my novel! And it's been fun! And that is the end of the first chapter. So far, so good.

Yay, 2,001 words accomplished for NaNoWriMo Day One yesterday! Woo hoo! I'm on my way!

And, yes, I did get to have my week in Paris, the first week in October. And yes, I do have tons of stuff to post, and photos to set up in Kodak Gallery. Things take time. I'm still absorbing much of what occurred in Paris. It'll probably be the only time I ever get to go, so I'm savoring all the memories and poring over the changes that magic city initiated in me.

But right now, It's National Novel Writing Month so don't expect much. (No oftener than I post here, I don't reckon you do anyway.

Is this what relaxing feels like?

I spent the weekend repeatedly making myself sit down and do nothing - well, sit down and read for pleasure.

In the months since my husband died I've kept a small but steady series of balls up in the air. I have a list of Things to Do, large projects and small ones, long-term and short-term, for myself, for others, about the house, finances, disposal of things of my husband's in appropriate manners...I keep two or three of them going at a time.

It's not Avoidance (of the pain of grief: in evidence I offer the fact that I do feel it daily, write in my diary about it, talk about it, sometimes wallow in it for short bursts), (of loneliness: I have no troubles with being alone, but I do miss my husband terribly. I "get along" fine on my own, otherwise).

It's just that there are a couple of overarching concerns: #1 that I clear out what I don't need as soon as I am able, timewise, financially, or emotionally so that if anything happens to me, my son isn't stuck dealing with all that excess. God knows he'll have enough to deal with just with the stuff I want to keep and will use! #2 that I maintain the house & yard in good condition for future sale, most probably when I die or if I ever have to move elsewhere.

But last weekend I'd gotten to a kind of coasting place. The two or three Current Projects, I have to wait for others' actions or inputs. I know better than to start another one, that way madness lies. I was caught up with my financial info and obligations; the house was clean; I had no outside committments. It was time to practice Relaxing. Loafing. Sitting around. Reading for pleasure for long periods of time.

I've gotten out of that habit. I don't say that bragging about how hard I work (anyone who knows me that working hard is NOT something I would brag about, lol). It's just that for the past several years, while Hubby's mobility decreased, I picked up most of what he did around the house and yard so that by the time he went into the hospital last spring, I had been pretty much doing everything for a couple of years. I felt guilty if I found myself Just Sitting, because there was always something productive I could be doing. Then, when he was in the hospital those horrible four months, I added a daily visit (weekends: two a day) to the hospital on top of all the house stuff and job. And of course the first few months since he passed away, I've had a few business things to take care of, and to begin to try to figure out what my life will be like now, and in the future.

I've been striving so hard to reach certain goals. One was, get the house cleaned thoroughly, upstairs and down, and get caught up with the laundry. OK. That's done. I've got a baseline to re-start a cleaning schedule so that it never has to wear me completely out. I looked around the place Saturday morning and was a little taken aback: There was nothing much to clean! I went down to the laundry room. There was nothing much to launder! I went up to the den and looked at the hosuehold books. There were no payments due, no money stuff to deal with! It was Saturday morning! Whatever would I do all weekend???

I pledged to myself to Loaf. Read. Snooze. Eat. Loaf Some More. It felt VERY strange. It felt good. I woke up this morning more rested and relaxed than I can ever remember on a Monday morning. And it occurs to me. Life doesn't have to be all stress and pressure. I don't have to constantly feel rushed, obliged, booked, inadequate, behind, tense. Man. That's going to take some getting used to.

In my 20's, I used to yearn - actively - for perspective. I'd be in the middle of some crisis - personal, employment-related, as a mother, a wife, a girlfriend (the latter two never overlapped, I hasten to add) - and in agony I would recall one particular incident when I was maybe 6, staying overnight with my grandma and grandpa (my dad's folks) when I got sick. Vomiting, diarrhea, the whole bit. And my grandma was so placid and competent and gave me such a golden feeling of being cared for with love - and just knowing what to do and what to expect - that even at that young age, I remember thinking: She's been through this raising four kids and it's no big deal and I will be OK. Perspective was the word didn't know when I was six.

I'm fifty-six now, and I finally do have more perspective. I raised a son - as best I knew how - and he's turned out to be a fine man, for which I give him most of the credit. I've been through a divorce, and now I'm learning about widowhood. All those years and joys and mistakes and learning and striving and agonizing have an accumulated weight that seems to stabilize this little boat bobbing on the waves.

I've learned that divorce brings lots else in addition to freedom - including never-vanishing regrets. What I know now is that there are armies of counselors who would have loved to help us, if only we'd know there were out there, and if only we hadn't been so afraid of self-examination. We may have been able to weather the problems, and even have emerged stronger and better people, if we'd known. Our son paid the price. Regrets.

In losing my second husband and in the months of his suffering before he died, I learned that all those things I'd agonized over for so long - all those points of stress and subjects of discord, all the resentments and power struggles - they were nothing - nothing, compared to the depth and strength of our love. They burned away and disappeared like toilet paper in the blast of concern, then fear, then horror when at last it became clear that he wouldn't be coming home. I consider myself so lucky to have been able to let him know in those months, by my actions and words, how much I loved him. I have no regrets on that count. He knew.

In addition to the many things I've learned through this experience, about my husband, myself, and us - I've learned that we have - I have - the best family and friends on Earth. They supported and loved us every step of that cruel path, and continue to do so. I lost my dear husband, but because of family and friends, I count myself among the luckiest of human beings.

Gratitude is the great antidote to so many habits of thinking and feeling that could twist and stain and cripple my life. Resentment, envy, feelings of inadequacy, fear - all of these are parts of my personality and - [checking...] - yes, daily I grapple with every one of them. But thanks to my husband and years of honest effort on my part, I have the tools that help me work through them. I cannot ever take it for granted that I'll succeed. Every rearing of one of those ugly heads requires my serious and honest confrontation. I don't imagine that I am always - or ever - 100% successful. But this blessed perspective helps me keep both my successes and failures to a human - not an overwhelming -scale. I have learned to judge when it's appropriate to forgive myself, and when I need to work harder.

It's funny - I had no idea what I was doing, in my 20's, in the thrashings of emotion and usually self-inflicted crisis - but in yearning for perspective, I was wishing for exactly the right thing.

I am so, so lucky.

I didn't realize it'd been so long since I posted. Some "daily" blog, eh? Oh, well.

I haven't kept up with the 1667 words/day required to finish NaNoWriMo at 50,000 words at the stroke of midnight, November 30th, but I've kept my hand in; I can still do it if I write 2,000 a day until then. Will I? I hope so. I could if I really set my mind to it. But even if I don't, it will have been well worth doing. It's reminded me what fun, and what solace, writing daily can be. Fiction, I mean. I keep at least one, currently two, daily journals going always, but fiction is different. I have to make up the incidents and characters in fiction; not so my journals. Fiction writing challenges me to dig deeper into my imagination, throw myself curves and fling myself aloft to catch them. Working at NaNo this year has also reminded me that I CAN write daily. Why not? What a loaded question, inviting scattershot of excuses. But now I'm reminded not only that I can do it, but also why I'd want to. Time well spent!

Feh. Only wrote 860 NaNo words today. On the other hand, I got quite a bit done at work. You know, where they pay me my salary. I know, I should have better priorities, but truth be told, I've been gone a LOT lately, unavoidably, and I feel like I owe them big-time. So, I just have to hammer out 2500 words tomorrow and I'm back on track.

(i'm okay, i'm on track, gone too far and i can't go back...)

Got today's quota of NaNo words in and it's just now noon. Yippee! Maybe I'll get some more done tonight, but in the meantime I have groceries to buy, a comic book to buy, and some art to do.

I sat down and wrote & wrote and got to a stopping point and quit, did the word count, and realized I was only about 350 words short of the whole day's quota, so I went back and wrote some more. It is SO NICE to be able to do that! I've had this suffocating writer's block (yah, yah, don't tell me there is no such thing - if you're thinking that it's because you've been lucky enough not to suffer it yet) for years now, and by gosh, they're right about NaNo - it does make writing fun again!

I did even less than I'd thought yesterday; I only got about 470 words written. However, I have made up for it today! Up to 6,704 words now! And it's humming along pretty well. It's got more of a YA adventure, maybe YA horror feel to it, or it could be a mystery (I'm looking from the reader's point of view here), than I intended. I'm going for something a bit dark, but with a little comic relief and lots of supsense and then pathos. lol - ambition is a lovely thing, God wot.

I figure I can make it darker and creepier in the rewrite. mwahahahaha!

I only got some 560 NaNo-words or so written this morning because I got to a spot where I have to draw a house plan. Quite a lot of the action will take place in this house and it needs certain attributes, so I have to draw floor plans. Then I can get the other 1200 or so words done tonight. Wish me luck.

Day Two of NaNoWriMo and I'm at 2,996 words so far with the whole evening ahead in which to work on it more. I'm pleased with it so far!

Kudos to everyone else in NaNo! Go forth and WRITE!

....Friday Nov. 3rd Addendum for last night: final day's total: 3566.

(That's the whole manuscript total.)

So far, so good. And it's fun again, which is why I signed on for this insanity.

I can truly say this year has been the best of times and the worst of times, with absolutely no exaggeration.

But in a few hours the 2006 National Novel Writing Month commences, and once again, I've signed up! This time I'm really committed and I'm gonna do it. I shall try to blog about it daily and if nothing else maybe I'll post a photo of the chaos of my home office.

I've actually made a study of efficient packing for travel. I've made it a goal to never have to check a bag at the airport. I'm getting pretty good at it, for short (fewer than four days) trips. I'm going to keep practicing. Packing light makes traveling so much simpler and easier.

I toy, from time to time, with the idea of trying my hand at travel writing. It's kind of a silly idea, because compared to many of the travel writers whose web sites I've seen, whose books I've read, whose articles I've read - I haven't traveled.

Oh, my job has taken me all over my home state of Nebraska many times. And it's sent me to conferences in many cities I otherwise would never have been able to visit. Let me count the cities: Chicago, San Antonio, St. Louis, Flagstaff, Albuquerque, Madison WI, Annapolis, Atlantic City, Kansas City (many times, and I can always go there anyway), Nashua NH...seems like there were more but I can't summon them up right now.

Oh yeah, that's another thing: my lace-like memory. And my brilliant powers of observation. (sarcasm) Those are both things that will serve me well in travel writing (/sarcasm). What town was I in? *scowls, straining to remember*

Well, it just occurred to me I might try a rapid memory exercise here. How about if I try to list the one thing that stands out most about each of those cities in my memory? Stream of unconsciousness...

Chicago: architecture. Love it!
San Antonio: the Alamo
St. Louis: how gray the downtown is
Flagstaff: those mountains
Albuquerque: the giant Native American-style pots in the highway medians
Madison WI: State Street!!!!
Annapolis: the sailboats in the marina
Atlantic City: the boardwalk, of course
Kansas City: Oh, I've been there too many times to pick one thing. The BBQ, I guess.
Nashua NH: my friend Chriss. Oh all right, and the fall foliage. But mostly Chriss.

It's discouraging, looking at that list, how mundane and cliche my Main Memory Things are. The Alamo??? The Boardwalk??? Yeeesh. I'm going to have to do better than THAT. Well, okay, I'll dig out all my photos and my trip diaries and for the next month I'm going to try to write *real* travel articles, the kind I like to read.

I'll include places I've been that weren't for my job too: Sunnyvale CA, Tucson AZ, Lake Andrusia, MN (obviously a vacation spot), Cheyenne Crossing SD...

This should be fun for *me*. Maybe some readers will enjoy it, too.

About the Battlestar Galactica 9/23/05 episode:

That rape scene from Friday night's Battlestar Galactica kept bugging me. It didn't harrow me, or "disturb" me – it provoked a lot of questions.

"She" is a machine – though capable of emotions, thought, and getting pregnant (this copy of Boomer IS pregnant by a human soldier, Helo). So what if they rape her? Especially since her kind is hell-bent on annihilating the human species? Why is any method of extracting useful information from her, wrong? Isn't it like torturing your car, or your lawn mower?

Ahh…that gets us closer to the answer.

Let's say that all the apparently human responses she showed during the rape (screaming, fighting, crying) really are just pre-programmed computer behaviors.

If you torture your lawn mower, it's not a crime. There's no law, legal or moral, against torturing your lawn mower. But what kind of person tortures their lawn mower?

And even if that asshole viewed the Boomer/Caprica copy as a machine, when it was giving off all those human-like signals of terror and horror and revulsion and pain, what kind of person wouldn't have an instinctive sympathetic response to that? Either a total sociopath, or a psychotic. Either actually evil, or helplessly sick. Or – if not one of those, then someone who knows perfectly well right from wrong but who has thrown all moral framework away in favor of indulging his fantasies of hatred and revenge.

But, say he's raping a machine. Isn't it a victimless non-crime?

Maybe a non-crime, but not victimless. He's distancing himself from the best parts of himself. He's crossing a line that he may not be able to cross back to regain his own humanity. And when (in the BG universe) there are only a few tens of thousands of human beings left, and they are threatened with extinction by millions of machines – isn't he really, by opting out of humanity, committing a crime against humanity?

And doesn't this resonate interestingly with the real USA right now?

I'm one with the notion that we immortalize loved "ones" in our memories of them, whether they're people, animals, places or events.

Reading the poem "The Rain Poured Down" by Dan Gerber (http://articles.poetryx.com/89/), a new thought struck me. In my memory there lives, will always live, a single tear: the first one I ever saw my father cry.

I can see him now, crouching forward on a living room hassock, elbows on knees, eyeglasses dangling from one hand. I don't remember for sure, but I think he'd just learned that his dad's cancer was inoperable.

He turned his face toward the open front screendoor so I wouldn't see, but it only threw that narrow quarter-face view of him into silvery light relief against the shadowed interior wall. And with a thrill of shock and dismay, I saw that tear run down the very border between his silvered cheek and the darkness beyond. That moment is frozen in my mind.

I knew as much how to comfort him then, when I was 12, as I do now, when he himself has been dead 11 years.

A single tear sinking like acid down through the softness of my broken heart.

"What'd you do over the weekend?"

"Oh, I got the snow tires swapped off my car."

I had to empty the trunk to hold the regular tires. I took out the pair of drapes with hardware that are supposed to get dumped at a Goodwill somewhere, the cardboard box holding my snowmobile boots, my hip waders and my irrigation boots, the three-legged stool that's broken, the "reacher-grabber" I take to the grocery store so I can get at things on the top shelves, the soft old Indian-print blanket, the half-jug of windshield wiper fluid and the dirty rag I use to check the oil, and put them in the garage. My emergency overnight duffel bag I brought into the house suspecting it needed refreshing and updating.

I went through the back porch and got the key to the padlock on the toolshed. I went out to the toolshed and got out the wheelbarrow, loaded the regular tires onto it, and hauled them out to the driveway and shoved them into the trunk. I left the wheelbarrow in the garage, and went back and locked up the toolshed. We took the car to the tires place and ordered an oil change and a tire swap.

Back home, I went down to the basement to start the laundry. The cat box needed cleaning, so I did that, and took the bag of dirty litter out to the garbage cans. I loaded and started the washer. I went back upstairs and brought the duffel bag up to the bedroom. I wanted to lay out its contents on the bed, but the linens are overdue for a change. So, I stripped the bed, tossed the linens down the chute, and put clean sheets & pillowcases on the bed.

I opened up the bag. A couple of books; a dirty toothbrush, a dried-up miniature tube of toothpaste; a hotel shampoo bottle whose contents looked like old amber; old contact lens solutions and cases, a box of granola bars and a sealed packet of beef jerky; a pair of underpants; a sweater so small for me now that I couldn't get it on if my life depended on it - ditto for a tee shirt; the two halves of a little plastic case I gleaned from the research lab I worked in years ago, and one of two cheap faux-pearl earrings I'd kept in it. I searched and searched for its mate, but it wasn't in the bag. I turned to the big jewelry box my father-in-law made me years ago. It broke recently; the lid's back rim stayed with the box's hinge and the top, with its mirror inside now loose, had come off. I laid all that lid stuff on the bed and started looking for the faux-pearl earring.

My jewelry box was a disaster. It looked like I'd thrown everything into the air and plopped random wads of earrings, buttons, belts, dead watches and God knows what else, back into its nine little velvet-lined compartments. It had been bugging me for months. No time like the present.

I pulled out all the buttons and put them in a pile. I emptied one compartment's contents into another, and put all the watches into the empty one. I went through every compartment and put all the "singleton" earrings into the center compartment, and all the earrings that were broken - with their mates, if they had them - into another one. All the loose earring-backs have their own "room." At the same time I matched up all the pairs and put them into the other four rooms.

Then I went through the mated pairs and put the cheap tacky ones into one compartment, and sorted the really good ones - which make up most of my collection, actually, my hubby has great taste - into the remaining four compartments. Voila! A long-needed task complete. I put the box lid, mirror and hardware in a place where hubby will be reminded he needs to fix it.

But no faux-pearl earring. I picked out a couple of cheap pairs I don't use much, and put them in the little plastic box. I tossed all the old toiletries and replenished them from my (recently-organized!) Travel Supplies box. The contact lens stuff I tossed; I only wear them at rock concerts any more. I re-packed the duffle with a new tee shirt that fits and a pair of socks. It's ready to go back into my trunk.

It's 1 p.m. So I went down and made three sandwiches and two glasses of Crystal Lite lemonade, and we're each eating lunch at our computers. When we're done, we'll go get my car.

And I can cross one To Do item off today's list.

As usual, nothing turns out the way you plan it. At least, it doesn't for me. I did okay with the writing for the first couple of days, then came down with a horrendous head cold and crapped out the rest of the week...it's better today, good Lord, it should be, with the zinc lozenges and cold medicines and orange juice I've been guzzling, and all the naps! What a way to spend a vacation. Oh well, it's just a cold. And it should be gone by the time I have to go back to work Tuesday. Hubby called, said they'll be getting back to town that day, too, so I have something to look forward to when I get home from work! He says Manitoba is gorgeous, so maybe we'll go back up there sometime for a getaway.

The writing went well when it was going, and I've gotten my plan logged so now I'll just chip away at it a little each day - more when inspiration hits. I will be SO glad when this monster is finished! I don't even care if it sells (though of course I'd rather it did than not)! I just want it off my back!

I feel just good enough to not want to nap any more, but not good enough to really desire to do anything, specific. Usually when I'm in this gray fog I go do housekeeping chores and that makes me feel at least somewhat productive. When I get tired out, I take a break with a book -- I'm re-reading Jack McDevitt's Eternity Road right now. He's a joy.

So it's down to the kitchen for some busy work. Maybe I'll get more writing in this afternoon.

So now I have EIGHT DAYS all to myself. I've launched a final desparate grab at finishing this demmed novel that's been sitting for like, five years, bugging me from afar. I love the first two-thirds, so now it's Step Up to the Plate Day. And I have been; all morning I worked on edits and re-acquainting myself with the "voice," and all that. I'm not giving myself time to get scared (what the effing BLOCK has been all about, though beyond that I haven't figured it out), I'm just TYPING. I'm always better at the re-writes, though I don't do what you'd call a *re-write* so much as multiple comb-throughs.

Anyway, this is a wonderful opportunity for me to immerse myself in this story, this world, and see how well I can do justice to it. The story's been in my head since about 1970. That's NOT kidding. 35 years. Wow. It deserves finishing, and publishing, and going out into the world to make its way. Been under Mommy's thumb for far, far too long.

Love ya, hubby. Have a great time! :)

Another old screed that I'd forgotten I'd written until a friend put it into his email Signature rotation (minor changes made for updating):

First it was Collin. Then John McCain lets us down. Rudy. One by one the ones who have shown us that greatness lies within them, succumb to the siren song of power.

Maybe the definition of a politician is a person who, at some later point in their life, discover that why, yes, they can use those heroic younger selves to gain more power for themselves today. That courage and integrity that saw them through those awful tests then, well, they're not really that useful today. They're now just coinage.

Whereas to an ordinary person who opts not to so use their own earlier days of triumph over adversity, who instead just live their lives peacefully and honorably, those days were all that justifies the rest of the time we take up space on the planet.

I just came across this old screed that I wrote on...November 23, 2002. Unfortunately, it's still topical.
==================================================================
We don’t need no steenking Homeland Security Department.

There, someone finally said it.

They could assign one or two key people from each of the agencies to serve on a coordinating governing board, to implement the meshing of computer and intelligence systems. It would save us taxpayers millions, maybe billions, of dollars. Just think of the letterhead printing changes alone! Give that governing body a clear agenda, a realistic timeline, and the power to carry it out. Give the agency heads the message that these people get cooperation at every level, or high-level heads will be rolling down the hallowed halls. Give them money to do the job, and a reasonable framework of rules to operate under. Then turn them loose with it.

Have *any* of our “leaders” *ever* worked INSIDE a government agency? I don’t think they could have, because I don’t hear or see any evidence that Bush or Ridge or any of them have any clue that what they’re demanding is ludicrous. Expensive, and frightening on several counts. But first, ludicrous because right now is NOT the time we need a gigantic percentage of our intelligence and law enforcement people coping with restructuring and moving furniture and people around.

Has it occurred to *anyone* that these people *already* have full workloads? And Bush thinks this Frankenstein monster is going to be up and running when? In a month? A year? Five years? Fine–we’ll tell Al Quaeda to come back later, when we’re presentable.

I can’t wait to see the organizational chart (the unrevealed Lines of Power chart would be too scary for a lay person, I’m quite sure). If they ever publish it, you should study it carefully. I know I will. Because if for any reason I ever get caught up in its coils, it’s liable to be an excruciatingly Byzantine trip back out to freedom. And that’s assuming that your capture was a benign mistake.

With Ashcroft looking more and more like Goering, there’s not much hope that everyone one who *is* masticated by the Homeland Security Department is guilty of something. At least, having to do with security. Perhaps guilty of criticizing Ashcroft on TV, or writing an anti-Iraq-war screed to the local paper’s Letters to the Editor. Or participating in a public rally to support Arab-Americans. Or having the misfortune to brush against a “Persian-looking” man on your way through the airport...or buying girlie magazines from your neighborhood’s Korean-American convenience store. I can, as you can see, imagine about a million ways that Bush’s minions might cast their suspicious eyes upon any given innocent citizen. Who can predict which one they’ll label “enemy combatants” – which means, bend over and kiss your ass goodbye, because you don’t get a lawyer, you don’t get to know what you’re charged with, you don’t get to see or talk to or correspond with your family, and you don’t have any way of knowing when you’re getting the hell out of their prison, and you have no rights and no recourse whatsoever.

Read that last sentence over carefully: "you have no rights and no recourse whatsoever."

Does that sound like America to you?

Some Democrats fought the Homeland Security Act’s measures that would strip all those government employees’ workers’ rights. While many citizens think any punishment for a guvvmint employee is too light, there is an aspect to this that bodes even greater evil for the people’s interests than whether a guvvmint employee gets to sue his supervisor for interrupting his coffee break (which seems to be what most citizens think is about the level of seriousness of guvmint employees’ complaints).

Any agency of public servants has its unwritten laws: mores of the culture of that particular agency. There may be an unwritten rule, for example, that no one gets overtime paid as *time*, no matter what the collective bargaining agreements might say about having to offer the employee a choice. Ask for your O-T in hours once, and you’ll get them. But you’ll never be granted O-T again (and most agencies now require employes to put in for O-T permission in advance).

There will be dozens of those kinds of rules thrown into chaos with the smashing together of all those existing federal agencies–that’s not necessarily a bad thing, by the way. But other unwritten rules may concern how privacy issues are handled for informants; how much latitude a staffer has to stretch the Chief Executive’s policies in the name of common sense and compassion. Or how to balance one’s knowlege of the deep-down bedrock patriotism of a co-worker who, in a caffeine rush, utters a disparagement of W Bush with other co-workers as witnesses. You may know the person is joking (albeit unwisely), but you also know that the other witnesses will be reporting the comments to *their* superiors.

Oh heck, go read Solzhenitsyn and LeCarre to see what the ramifications of government workers without rights can result in, and what happens to the general citizenry and truth and justice. This worries me more than the “well-being” of those employees now facing such a life–and I *am* concerned with their well-being. After all, they’re Americans, too. And if one of them learns of clandestine but profound violations of the Constitution by their agency or the White House? What does she do then, with no right to complain if her job is suddenly terminated, or she’s shifted over to the basement paper clip-counting gulag? Or, and I hope this isn’t likely, if her life or family is threatened if she blows the whistle?

Excuse me, but I don’t think this is how democracy works, I don’t give a DAMN about Al Quaeda. If we end up with the same nightmare that Bin Ladn or Saddam would impose upon us, given half a chance, imposed instead by our own “leaders,” how have we gained? I believe we’re in as much danger from those now running the show around the White House as we are from Saddam Hussein. Their methods won’t be mushroom clouds or insidious microbes. They’ll use stepwise dismantling of our Bill of Rights, methodical replacement of centrist judges with those more amenable to the far-right plans, and relentlessly equating dissent with anti-Americanism. And they’ll count on our love of ease and cheapness of gasoline to keep us quiet while the transformation takes place.

One more peeve: Who the hell thought up the title, Homeland Security? It sounds more like some mindless Maoist or Ruskie slogan than anything I ever heard of here. It sounds like “The Fatherland.” Are we going to be required to call W “Father” someday soon?
===================================================================

I'm sickened to realize that the situation has only gotten worse over the past two and one-half years, not better.

I did something cowardly yesterday. I am full of rationalizations but it was still cowardly and against everything I say I stand for.

I spoke about wetlands before about 60 6th graders yesterday afternoon. After I gave my basic Wetlands Intro talk, we had Q & A. They were asking good questions, several wanting to know what different kinds of wetlands there are and what each kind is "good for." I myself opened up the subject of vernal pools and started to talk about how one of their chief benefits in nature is protecting tiny populations of small amphibians and invertebrates from larger predators - and I started to say "provide habitat for isolated populations that through thousands of generations will evolve into even more different species" - when the words stuck in my throat. I wonder if I looked panicky for a second. I remember my gaze zooming around the room, taking in the childrens' faces, the teacher's and the principal's and the other guest speaker's - "What if one of the kids objects to the mention of evolution?" raced through my mind. "No-win: argue with a 6th grader? Parents! Irate principal? Professional reprimand?" All in an instant,- and I choked. I went on to another topic.

I have a bagful of rationalizations: I was only there for 1/2 hour, why introduce controversy and a complex subject way over the kids' heads? It's not my job to teach evolution, I was there to talk about wetlands (yeah, that sounds lame even to me). What right do I have to stir up trouble and leave the school staff to deal with it? (another lame one)

This forces me to re-evaluate my self-image as well as what my role is when I go to these guest shots. It is also a wake-up call; now I realize what kind of temptation towards self-censorship teachers must experience on a daily basis. I'm sure the support level of the principal is absolutely critical on a school-by-school basis, and of course that's determined largely by how much support the principal gets from the school board. And the population from which school boards are drawn seems to be racing for the Dark Ages as fast as it can go.

My own cowardice shakes me deeply. We're in worse trouble than I thought. What can I do? I can think hard about what I did yesterday and make concrete plans to prevent it from happening again. I can post it on my blog for all the world to see, to ventilate the struggle.

I've been wringing my hands over what's happening to this country for so long - since the Nov. 2000 "election," really - and it's time I quit wringing and started doing something. Not being sure where I'd put a barricade but being quite sure it'd look pretty silly for one short, chubby, middle-aged woman to be "manning" it, I look around for what else I could do...well, the internet makes it easy to send outraged emails to Congress and the White House and the State capitol. So I've increased my rate of doing that.

I've spent all these years since the Occupation of the White House reading and listening (radio), trying to understand how things work, what's happening. I surprised myself by beginning to perceive people's motivations behind their actions. I could be wrong, probably am sometimes, but if it's true that "by their deeds you shall know them," I think Bush & Co. have painted a pretty clear picture by now.

What baffles me now is how ANYONE with ANY intelligence whatsoever could believe a word t/he/y say/s. What baffles me is how so many professional news people - who are *supposed* to be the world's most cynical human beings - continue to take Bush Administration utterances at face value, with no follow-up questions - and there are dozens of follow-up questions BEGGING to be asked whenever one of those sociopathic liars speaks in public - and how true political investigative journalism seems to be completely missing from television news these days. They're all "personalities" (hairdos) or celebrities.

Even people with decades of experience don't seem to realize who they're dealing with. They ask questions AS IF there must be some benevolent reason for the outrageous acts of this Administration. AS IF Bush & Co.'s systematic destruction of The Bill of Rights could maybe be a reasonable approach to anything, if only the interviewee would share the reasons with us.

I'm really really sick of the media acting as if the current Administration is anything other than a fascist regime in power due to a coup achieved through the rigging of national elections. I'm sick of the "President" and his cronies marching us lockstep off the short dock to turning the USA into another Third World dictatorship suited only to serve the wealthiest with underpaid manpower and stolen natural resources. I'm sick of their pandering to fundamentalist lunacy, beating our science and social support systems down, back to the Dark Ages.

At the same time, like everyone else, I have a mortgage and look ahead to the likelihood of increasing medical costs as I get older. I can't quit my job and take to the streets - well, I could, but what would that accomplish? Living in a box under a bridge isn't a very effective political statement.

Well, I'll start with what I can do now. I've got this blog, that some people read (not many, but I have Statcounter, I know people visit here), so instead of using it only as the not-very-interesting personal diary it's been, I'm going to sound off here when I need to. Will it help? I don't know; not much, probably. But it's a record that one more person is not buying the bullshit.

Road Through Kurdistan: Travels in Northern Iraq - Another book I'll have to find, Powell's review linked below. In reading The New Great Game: Blood and Oil in Central Asia, I'm finding out that NOTHING we've been trained to think about that part of the world (which is, essentially, nothing, except maybe that they're "primitive tribespeople" and it's very mountainous, which is half true) has any relationship to reality.

It's discouraging because it's such a complicated mess and has been for so long, and there are so many powers vying for ascendancy over there, and have been for over a hundred years, that I don't think there's ANY honorable alternative to what we're doing (which I don't believe is honorable for one nanosecond). It's fascinating reading, but then glimpsing the truth always is.

But it's disgusting that we are so ignorant of what keeps our precious "free market democracy" running. As usual, the people at whose expense we thrive have no such illusions about us. We're in Afghanistan and Iraq, we're dealing with the butchers in Khazakstan and Uzbekistan etc, we're ignoring what Russia's doing to the Chechyans, for the oil. Period. Full stop. They know it. *I* knew it by September 18, 2001 - the minute I heard the word Afghanistan, I thought, uh oh, primo excuse here we come. Why didn't everybody else know it?

Why do I ask? It's deliberate, cultivated ignorance. Everybody just keeps on being good little patriotic consumers.

==============================

Today's Review From
Times Literary Supplement

Road Through Kurdistan: Travels in Northern Iraq
by Archibald Milne Hamilton

<<>
Read today's review in HTML at:
http://www.powells.com/tls/review/2005_03_27

Woo hoo, now I've done my 15 @ 15 twice this week. This is a major improvement from having done NONE for MONTHS. I even did some stomach crunches the way my Doctor advised me. They sound weenie but they HURT. Man, I'm out of shape. But it amazes me every time how much better I feel right after exercizing! (Is that spelled right? It doesn't look right.) Anyhow, here I go, trying to get back in the habit of working out again. I had that danged flu two weeks ago, for like 8 days, and it's just so nice to feel alive again!

I took a book down there to read on the bike, but I also had M. Ward's next-to-last CD playing in the headphones, and I quickly dumped the book to pedal (and sing, if singing is what you call what I do) along with M. I want his new CD!!!

Not a very exciting blog, but one, at least.

I subscribe to Heroic Stories (http://www.heroicstories.com/). These true stories of people reaching out to help one another with no regard to their own benefit, are really little doses of antidote to the horrors and outrages that seem to overwhelm us these days. The most recent one was from a man who as a small child was afraid of the water, and how he overcame his fear to save another little boy, and then realized he had to learn to swim. Both kids had their lives given back to them that day.

It got me thinking about three skills that I believe are essential life skills: learning to drive a stick shift automobile, swimming, and reading.

Well, just learning to drive is essential, in my opinion. Even if you never own a car, you never know when you'll need to be able to get around in one. And for that reason I also emphasize driving a stick shift. Anybody who can drive, can drive an automatic shift car. But you might find yourself in a life or death situation and the only vehicle available is a stick shift. Think how awful that would be, with the vehicle right there but useless to you because you couldn't get the damned thing to go!

It's my impression that women are most often dismissive of stick shifts, but as more and more women are working in jobs where that's what's likely to be around - I'm thinking of engineers and building contractors on job sites, but there are plenty of others, I'm sure - it's just crazy for a woman not to know how to drive a stick shift vehicle. It may not be easy to learn (my first attempts in Driver's Ed were a failure, but my first husband had a stick shift Rambler and he taught me), but really, if you're determined, you can get it. Once you figure out that catch-point of the clutch, every stick shift vehicle, whether "on the floor" or "on the column" (do they make those any more? Doesn't matter - the old ones are still around) will be your servant when you need it.

And swimming! It's insane not to teach your kids to swim! Or if you've reached adulthood without it, not to go learn how. There cannot be many places in the USA where there's not someone, and somewhere, to go to learn this vital skill. Even if you never intend to go to the beach, or swim recreationally, you never EVER know when you'll need this ability. Imagine how horrible to have to watch someone drown in a flood or a motel swimming pool because you can't get to them. Not to mention drowning, yourself. Most swimming teachers these days know now to teach someone who's afraid of the water, and no mature adult is going to have anything but respect for a person who wants to learn.

So if you can't swim today, and/or can't drive a manual transmission car - do what it takes to learn. You can do it! And the life you save might someday be your own, or someone you love.

Reading is too big a subject - I'll get to that another day. Besides, if you're reading this, it doesn't apply to you!

I've got this nifty program called Musings that I've set to open when I turn on the computer. It gives a daily quote from some writer down through the ages, about writing, and then it gives a little writing exercise you can do. I don't often do them, because usually I'm pressed for time and just want to check my email or get to my WP to start writing. But I liked this morning's, which said to make up a definition for each of these four non-words, tell what part of speech it belongs to, and use it in a sentence:

malstudious: adjective. designating a student of black magic. If that boy Malfoy isn't malstudious, I'm a purple spider.

shombex: adjective. a gem having one or more facets located in a different dimension than the observer's. The way it teases the eye, I think this Rigellian crystal is shombex.

infergus: noun. A leap taken to a conclusion. It's a bit of an infergus to think that just because James is black means he doesn't like country & western music.

hestie: noun. A flat-chested Irish woman with a grudge. Don't get on the wrong side of that hestie; she'll lay a curse on your butter.

Fun! Musings is Freeware from Grim Software in Nova Scotia: http://www.grimsoft.com. You can try it free for like a month (I think) and then if you want to buy it, it's just a nominal price.

So here we are in the new year. Considering that my mother died on January 1, 2004, this year is already way ahead of last year in the betterness department...unless you're in Sumatra. Somehow the enormity of that tragedy makes anything I might write in here seem despicably self-centered and tiny.

There was one odd thing; the day after the tsunami, my web site got a hit from the northern tip of Sumatra - someone had googled the term "usage of the ellipsis" and gotten my web page that discusses that very thing. But I'm having a very hard time figuring out why anyone there would need that information on that particular day. Is someone's English teacher a really truly frightening hard-ass? Somehow I doubt it.

The world is a very weird place.

I've sadly neglected this blog. Thought I should stick my head in here since it's the last day of 2004 (and I can't tell you how glad I am this year is almost gone).

To mop up: I dropped my efforts at 15@15. I'll resume tomorrow, with my intent to ride my Tunturi bike for 15 minutes a day at setting 15 (that's all I have to do to satisfy my pledge; if I do more it's okay, if I don't it's okay. But I'm sick and tired of hating myself for failing all my goals about dieting and exercising. So I ain't gonna do that any more.)

I haven't been writing daily, but I did participate in National Novel Writing Month, and while I didn't finish the novel I was working on, it did get me much farther along in it, and rekindled some of my enthusiasm for it. And this week while I've been on vacation, I've been doing a lot of editing on a novella I sold to Eggplant Publications, hoping to finish it in time to re-send it to the editor tonight. Didn't quite make that, but I shall tomorrow. Or maybe Sunday; if I finish the work tomorrow I'll re-read it Sunday before sending it to her. Then, I'll go back to the novel. I'd like to have that finished, polished, and have query packages going around to agents and publishers starting April 1. It surely would be nice to sell a novel this year!

I hope anyone who's reading this has a great 2005. Remember: Attitude is everything.

Terry

Whoa, this place is getting dusty!

Well, happy to say, I've been doing a lot better with the 15 @ 15 effort, largely because I committed myself to the National Novel Writing Month (http://www.nanowrimo.org/), or, as I like to call it, 30DoM = 30 Days of Madness). The concept of completing 50,000 words in 30 days was so frightening that I prepped myself mentally by committing to 15 @ 15 every night, NO TV during the weeknights, and 1667 words per day for the month.

Am I perfect?

Bwahahahahahah!

But I've done 15 @ 15 five out of the last 9 nights (a LOT better than before) and the writing is at 8,000+ words. I've got the next two days off so I figure I'll catch up and pass my daily average. So that's not worrying me.

NaNo frees me up to write crap! And crap I'm writing, but even as it comes pouring out I'm thinking of ways to make it better - once the whole thing's done and it's time to edit and re-write and polish.

To be honest I'm not working on a *new* novel; this is one that's been about 2/3 done for over four years. That first 2/3 is *great* (IMNSHO) and I think that's always scared me off of finishing it - how to make the last part live up to the first part? Well--I've set those neurotic worries aside for NaNo and I'm just cranking it out now. This is an excellent exercise for shucking that writer's block jive right offa my back.

So it'll probably be awhile before I log anything here again. Not that there's anyone coming back daily and being crushed when there's nothing new...