October in Review

Yes, October was very busy. See? It's November now.

Boston was fabulous. As was New England. We pretty much ate our way through Boston and New England. Loved it. :) It rained on us several days, but we went out in the rain and saw the city anyway. (For those of you who aren't familiar with Boston, that's the clock tower on the left.) (Please do not ask me what clock tower... It's downtown.)

We ate lobster. Lobster is good, but it's rather labor-intensive, if you just have a boiled/steamed lobster. Personally, I want somebody else to crack the thing open and pick all the meat out for me. I feel the same way about crabs and crawfish. I will consent to peel shrimp, but only if they're boiled without heads. Those heads have to come off before I sit down to eat.

(I will de-head shrimp to freeze, or to prepare them for cooking, but I do not like it. Shrimp heads are pokey--meaning they will poke you with their sharp pokey things. They are also hairy. Not like a bear, but they have those long feeler things that are like coarse hairs. Ick. It's a good thing shrimps are so tasty.)

Anyway, I ate lobster bisque, lobster mac & cheese, lobster roll, and something else lobstery. The fella did the boiled lobster eating. It was a lovely division of labor. Or whatever.

I also went to Valley Mills for the annual Heart of Texas RWA chapter fall retreat and wrote for several days. And now I have posted a new/old book--I wrote it a while back, but I still like it... It's the sequel to one of my old Silhouette Desire books, Her Convenient Millionaire, which was published back in '03. Poor Little Rich Girl was never published until now. It's another marriage of convenience story set in Palm Beach, about the sister of the heroine in the first book. It should be up at Amazon and Barnes & Noble tomorrow or the next day, so take a look.

What else? Daddy wound up not having any surgery--we decided it would just upset him for very little result. And besides, we had to move him out of the nursing home where he's been for the past year & three-quarters. They couldn't handle him any more. So we moved him down here near me to a place that specializes in assisted living for Alzheimer's patients and other folks with dementia. It's a really nice place, and he seems to be responding really well.

We kind of hate having him where Mama can't visit when she wants, but he can't really carry on a conversation any more and it upsets her to see him so bad. And then she can't remember going. Or thinks she did when she didn't. But it's been good for him, so we're okay with it. I took some pictures of him with my tablet, but haven't figured out how to do the upload thing from it, yet.

The daughter wants her dad to come see their new house in Georgia, so we're going there sometime this month. And since he occasionally has meetings in Georgia, we'll get to go visit more often. That's happy-making.

Well, it's election day (I voted early), so I guess I'll go see what Jon Stewart has to say about it all...

Making it fun again

I've got a very busy month coming up. Between having to drive up to take my dad to his cataract surgery appointments and other stuff going on, I'm not sure I'll have time to get my clothes washed. And the month will be capped off with a lovely colonoscopy on the 30th. Joy.

So, I've been thinking about things like coping with being tired, and trying to get the writing done along with all the regular stuff, and about having fun too, because some of the things I have on my schedule are fun. And then I'm thinking about writing and thinking "That should be fun, too."

It's really hard for me to write when I'm not having fun. And the stuff I write is no better than pedestrian. It's not good writing, it's just kinda going-through-the-motions writing.You may motivate yourself through a fear of failure, or a drive for success, and that's great. For you. Me? Not so much.

So it's important for me to figure out how to grab hold of the joy that writing was for me back when I first started writing. I'm one of those people who wrote her first story when I was still in elementary school. I was reading a lot of animal stories back then and the one I wrote was about a cat, I think. It was about playing make-believe, but a more intense kind of make-believe. One with more detail. And it was all about the story.

I was having fun when I wrote those stories. Once, when I was telling my fella (who is in the community college business) about a novel-writing class I was teaching, and about the writing exercises I had the students do, he said, "And they do them? They write? Voluntarily?"

Well, yes. Because it's fun.

Apparently, there are a lot of community college students who don't see writing as fun. It's more of a chore, to them. But to me, it's fun. Really. It is.

I just have to remember that. And maybe rest up when I get tired. It's hard to have fun when you're falling asleep over the keyboard/paper.

And just so you know-- I plan to collapse once November gets here...

Rainy Days and Wednesdays

It did rain today. I thought I'd miss my walk this morning, but the rain was over in a couple of minutes--on my end of the island, anyway--so I got out and walked. It rained after lunch too--really hard, for longer. Maybe half an hour. And then it moved on, and I went to the grocery store without getting wet. I was out of cereal. ;)

This is a great time of year here on the Gulf coast. It's still hot--though it was down below 80F/26.7C early this week, which can feel darn cold when you've been at 90F (32C) or hotter since May! The magnolias in the front and back of the house are getting lots of ripe cones on them. Our yard magnolias bloomed like crazy this year, so lots and lots of cones. The picture I found had a squirrel in it--squirrels and birds love the seeds on the cones. They also like the --I guess they're dates on a neighbor's palm tree, but they're not the kind of dates people eat. They look like little fibrous dates, though, and they grow on a palm, so they must be related. It's high living for the birds this time of year.

All the seabird babies are getting big enough to go out and find their own food. I saw an actual Vee of pelicans this morning when I was walking. Usually pelicans don't fly in vees. They seem to be always in straight lines--unless there are lots and lots of them flying together, and this group had 30 birds. Usually, they're in lines of a dozen or less, but 30!! Might have been more--I was counting really fast. I saw a baby laughing gull this morning too. The babies are as big as their parents this time of year, but their feathers are still brown, rather than gray and black. The white's coming in, but not the gray.

I went to see the parents at the end of last week. Daddy's cataracts are apparently pretty bad--he's very uncertain in his walking, especially going up and down steps, because he just can't see where he's going. He sticks close to the wall and holds onto the handrail for guidance--which is better than just blithely strolling down the middle of the hallway. If the doctor thinks he'll leave his eye alone after the surgery, we'll probably have at least one eye operated on. He just can't be picking at it afterward, and since he won't be able to remember he had surgery, it's an issue. Still, he hasn't been picking at his face lately, so maybe he won't. Mother's about the same...she's starting to read her books over again because she can't remember what was in them. But I read books over too, so-- I do it because I can't remember if I've read them before or not, and then I read them and realize--yes, I've read this. Oh well.

I've been writing a little bit. I'm kind of in a "what do I want to work on now" situation. I'm not sure what I'm in the mood to write--and unfortunately, right now, I seem to have to be in the mood, or nothing gets done. So I'll think a little and get out files and re-read a little and see what strikes me. Maybe I'll clean up my desk too.

The Scary Tumble

Okay, so I spent the first week and a half of August helping the daughter and son-in-law move from Pennsylvania to Georgia. I was the grandkid wrangler and the relief driver.

The wild child--aka Mowgli--is 9 years old now, and doing pretty well with his autism, as long as you keep him busy. His parents prepared him really well for the move--by the time we were packing things up, he was mostly worried that we might not get the basement television in a box. We found him trying to pull it up the stairs by its electric cord...

Rocket Girl is 18 months old, and very busy too. When the movers came and we were desperately throwing things in boxes as fast as we could go, she got her own little shoe-box-sized cardboard box and carefully put Bob the Tomato, a book and a stroller toy in it. She was packing too.

So, we drove to Georgia--a day late because one of the cars broke down and had to spend a day in the shop. Then the same car wouldn't start after our overnight stop in Virginia--but after we jumped it off, it started every time after that. (Turned out, the connectors were bad, not the battery.) The daughter didn't make orientation for her new job, because of all the car issues, but we got there before school started.

The bridge--with boy

The new house is down a slope from the street--a fairly shallow slope with a straight driveway, and a parking area at the bottom. Then the lot drops steeply down to a really cool creek behind the house, with a curb at the edge of the parking area to keep cars in place. There's a bridge over the creek, and wild child spotted it immediately. He loves that creek, and that bridge. When she was house shopping, the daughter described this house to me as "The Calvin & Hobbes house" because it's the kind of house C&H would have loved--the back yard slope is one of those Calvin would go sledding down, complete with "terraces of death."

When the movers arrived, Mowgli was anxious to get "his" television out immediately, and so climbed up in the cab of the truck. Three times in 30 minutes. His mom took him bicycle riding around the neighborhood to distract him. When they got back, she watched him pedal around the moving van, watching the car coming down the street, to make sure he was careful. Then when she got around to the end of the van, she saw him riding his bicycle down the driveway. And apparently he forgot about brakes.

Mom's hollering "Brakes! Brakes!" He's going faster and faster. The movers are yelling. And Mowgli speeds across the parking pad, hits the curb and goes airborne. He landed about five or six yards down the hill.

Do you see the tire tracks???

He got a bad bruise in his crotch, and tire tracks across his forehead. The bicycle fork got bent. Other than that, he was fine. And the next day, as we went out the garage to the scene of all the excitement, he informed us that we needed to be careful of "the scary tumble." That may now be the name of the hill...

I stayed in Georgia a few more days, long enough to get Mowgli registered for school and go out to meet his teacher. And now life goes on.

I'm going to be doing some traveling this next month, getting Daddy's cataracts seen to. He apparently doesn't remember how he's supposed to see, so he doesn't realize that he can't see now. But I do have time for writing, between trips to Austin. I've been very good and written every day this week. Even when we had our fire adventure.

I took a half day (after writing) and went shopping yesterday. I am now outfitted from the skin out, head to toe. I bought a new hat, shoes, draws, jeans and shirts. I bought a present for my niece's wedding shower--but the shower is on my birthday, so while I'm going up there sometime next week, I may not stay through Saturday, because the shower is so late in the day. If I come home, the fella will take me out. We went out to Benno's on the Beach for his birthday today. For the next week, the fella will be older than me. ;)

Which reminds me. I need to go get my driver's license renewed. At least they've reopened the DPS office on the island, after our last hurricane.

Surf's up this weekend because of Isaac, but fortunately, that's all we've gotten from it. Y'all take care.

Where there's smoke...

I'm a little embarrassed, it's been so long since I posted a blog, but we had some excitement at the house this a.m., and I can't settle down until I talk to somebody about it, and I can't get to my office where the e-mail is, and I've already talked to everybody around here about it...

We had smoke, but we didn't actually have a fire.

We've been fighting with an air conditioner that doesn't want to stay fixed for almost two months now (of course, in the hottest part of the summer--and it hasn't been that hot of a summer...). The fella turned it off last night, because it had apparently frozen up, and when I turned it back on this a.m. (When are the dang hot flashes supposed to stop??), I smelled a little burnt smell, like dirt burning off maybe. Went on to eat breakfast, and about an hour after I turned it on, I smelled a serious, big burnt smell. And it looked kind of hazy, like maybe there was smoke. So I texted the fella that I was turning the a/c back off, and that it smelled bad. He called me back and asked about smoke, but I just wasn't sure. Sometimes my glasses get hazy... So I walked around and looked, asked him to come home...and when I went to see if it was any worse at the attic access (where the a/c is), there was smoke all in that back hall. That's when I called 911.

They sent two rescue units, four police cars, three or four fire engines (don't know if the picture is actually one of "our" trucks, but it is GPD), and the battalion chief. They could smell the smoke. They could see the smoke. They couldn't find the fire.

The first two policemen to arrive went in the house--I assume to make sure I was the only one home. (I was already out on the front lawn.) Then 6 or 7 fully turned-out firemen went in. I think they did finally decided it was something in the a/c that burned up. They opened up both units (we have one for the bedrooms and one for the front of the house), turned them off, turned off the breaker, turned off the gas lines running by--pretty much turned off everything a/c related that they could turn off. Three of the four trucks stayed until they'd checked everything and decided it was the a/c.

The firemen were so nice. They appreciated that I called them to come check it out, rather than trying to do it myself. They'd rather come out on a nice cool-ish, breezy day--and then not have to fight a fire... (Cool is a relative term in Texas, in August. It doesn't start cooling off until October, here. But it might be 88F (31C) instead of 98...)

The repairman, Phil, came by and said it was the blower motor that burned up, plus the insulation inside the unit. They're going to replace the whole thing.

In other news, the summer has pretty much been a bust, writing-wise. I figured out that from the third week in July through the third week in August, I either had company or was out of town (mostly wrangling grandkids) except for about four days. In which I pretty much lay around and ate bonbons. Or Cheetos. Whichever.

I discovered the e-book lending at the local public library. I've also been doing some freelance editing, and between the two of them, I've been inspired to get back to work, however. I've written one whole day in a row. I'm going to try to keep it going. Wish me luck. I've got a lot of work to do. And now that I've vented to the world--I shall remind myself to write a blog about the grandboy Mowgli's "scary tumble," and then get to that work. The windows are open and there's a fan going, and I've kind of gotten used to working in 80F temperatures. It should be good.

Strange dreams

I had one the other night that still lingers. This one was more bittersweet than funny (like the cows at the high school).

Just before I left town to go stay with my daughter and babysit for two weeks, my cousin Scott died. He was the first of our generation to leave us, and he was only four months older than me. That year was the only year that my mother and all three of her sisters had a baby. Scott was the last child of the oldest sister, and I'm the first child of the youngest sister. Paul's a month older than me, and David is two weeks younger. (My mamaw told Mama they'd better never do that to her again. She was exhausted, helping with all those babies.)

Scott in 2004 at family Thanksgiving gathering

I hadn't seen Scott in a while--not since our aunt's funeral in Waco a year and a half ago. (Now only the oldest and youngest sisters are left of the four sisters.) I could have delayed my trip to go to the funeral--Mama wanted to go and couldn't drive herself--but I decided it would have delayed it too much. My daughter needed me, and my brother and brother-in-law had already volunteered to take Mama. And I was okay with that decision.

So, the dream. I don't remember when exactly it was--either just before or just after I got home. But I dreamed that Scott, David, Paul's baby brother Matt and I were in Colorado working on a house. It wasn't any of the houses where we met and played when we were growing up, but it belonged to the family somehow, and I've dreamed about this house before. We all looked like I remember us looking years ago--just out of college, maybe. Scott and I both had dark hair (we are the grayest of all the multitude of cousins), and we were all skinny.

In the dream, after working for a while, we all sat down at the kitchen table to have a soda and rest and visit. And I remember thinking, "But Scott's dead, isn't he?" and looking closely at him to see if it might be one of his brothers. But no, it was Scott all right. And then I wondered why Matt was there, instead of Paul--since Paul was the one born the same year as the rest of us. Never have figured that one out. But in my dream, I got a hug from Scott. A long, strong, big cousinly bear hug.

Now, maybe it was just my mind deciding I needed to work things out, but I like to think that Scott decided to drop in to say goodbye.

Steel City times

I'm up visiting the daughter, helping out with the chilluns while she tries to get her PhD finished. I'm filling in for the nanny until she comes back from having her new baby. (I don't know if the baby will come too or not.) and baby grandgirl is now 1 year old and wants to help me. I have to keep her from typing with her feet, standing on the table, falling off the bench, and putting her apple in the crayon box. She's absolutely adorable. :)

I'm having adventures in driving in Pittsburgh again, too. I dropped my daughter off at Carnegie Mellon so she could go to her seminar and I could come back home to meet the grandboy from the bus and take him to his social skills therapy. I got lost before I got off the CMU campus. But the daughter was available by cellphone and got me straightened out and where I needed to be. We even made it out to therapy without mishap.

Then came home to discover that the dog ate a whole bag (less about 6 kisses) of dark chocolate kiusses, foil and all. She's a medium sized dog (the one in front, in the picture--the other is her cousin dog who came to visit) so maybe it won't be too big a dose.

And yet, I am still writing, believe it or not. I'm not getting a whole lot done at a time, and when I can't turn on the heater (we can't run the heater in my room and baby girl's room at the same time or it will blow a breaker), I can't write, because it's cold enough for this Southern wuss with no cold tolerance that I just get under the covers and go to sleep. But I am writing.

Okay, time to go pick up the boy and then go get his mama and then go get some supper. Y'all take care. And wish me luck. I do not want to get lost again.

Catching up

Okay, this was back in September, but it's not a whole lot different now.

Okay, trying to get back into the habit.

I'm trying to get back into lots of habits. The habit of writing every day. The habit of walking nearly every day. All those other daily things that need to be done--and I'd rather write than --oh, dust or wash mirrors. Than wash pretty much anything. (Hmm, reminds me--I need to wash knives.)

I have been in a non-writing, non-reading, non-pretty-much-everything mood for a while now. Not sure why. But I went to Valley Mills for a writing weekend with three friends, and found the writing-is-fun mindset again. It took me a while. I read several books, and goofed off a lot, but I also brainstormed plots with "the girls"--theirs and mine--and wrote through the bad moods until I discovered the way out of the parts where I got stuck. And I've been having a good time this week with the writing.

Also, I discovered that the ripple in my vision is from a genetic anomaly--an extra blood vessel in my eye that leaked, but no fluid is collecting, it's not macular degeneration, and the doctors say that no other treatment is needed until and unless it gets a whole lot worse. No shots in my eye. It's my right eye, which isn't the good eye, so the ripple is hard to notice. Good news.

I'm doing Weight Watchers online for at least the next three months. Wish me luck. I've been on it for a whole week, and have lost 0.2 pound. Better than a poke in the eye with a sharp stick, though. Fixing to head out for a walk up on the seawall.

Etouffee and Mardi Gras (mostly etouffee)

Typical me. I set a goal of posting blogs more regularly, and then I don't. But I'm back. Don't everybody get all excited at once.

I have to get up and find a box to pack my grandbaby's birthday present in (she's almost one!) and wrap it and mail it, but it's raining and I don't want to go out. Not even into the garage, the retirement home for boxes. But I will, because grandgirls only have a first birthday once. Before I do, though, I'm going to post this blog. I am determined to post it.

This is Mardi Gras weekend in Galveston. I don't think there are any parades tonight, but there will be parties, drinking and merriment downtown. I'm going to the local Boy Scout council Eagle Scout appreciation dinner, where we will have either barbecue or rubber chicken and appreciate this year's crop of Eagle Scouts. Bound to be better than all that hoorah-ing downtown. :)

Anyway, the thing that really motivated me to post this blog was the food we ate last night. We ate at home. You see, I went to Target yesterday afternoon to buy fish oil tablets and shaving cream and stuff, and wandered over into the new food section to see if they had anything interesting that I could cook for supper. I wasn't feeling inspired by the stuff I had in the freezer at home. And in the freezer section, where the fish and frozen shrimp was, I saw a package of crawfish tails. Suddenly, I was inspired and struck by a desire for some crawfish etouffee.

I realize that some might be put off by the idea of eating something with the nickname of "mudbug," that looks like a mini-lobster. Crawdads, as we used to call them when my brother and his friends would go crawdad fishing when we lived in Houston, aren't exactly seafood. They don't live in the sea, but--well, in the mud. Still, they are some mighty tasty eating, though I am far from a purist. I will not boil and peel them whole, or eat them whole. Somebody else has to do the peeling and picking for me. And lo, and behold! Here was a whole package of tails that somebody had done just that to, just for me. :)

Sometime last year, we went to one of our favorite restaurants--one just around the corner--and I ordered their crawfish two-ways dish, with etouffee and fried tails. And I was shocked to the bone because their etouffee was BLAND! It didn't even have much in the way of salt in it, much less that Cajun "kapow!" This is a good restaurant, with food we enjoy, but I had to break out the Tabasco and pepper to get it up to edible level. So, I figured I could come up with a decent etouffee, making it myself.

I brought my crawfish home and hauled out the recipe books. On a trip to New Orleans a couple of years back, I bought a cookbook called Best of the Best from Louisiana Cookbook, that culled the best recipes from the Junior League and church cookbooks across the state. It even has a recipe for squirrel in it. Really. I figured it would have etouffee recipes in it. I also have a set of cookbooks full of Southern Heritage cooking from the publishers of Southern Living magazine. I found three recipes for crawfish etouffee in the Louisiana book, and two more, plus recipes for crawfish bisque and crawfish stew in the Southern Heritage books. (The Louisiana book also has recipes for stew, pie, fried tails, Gouda crawfish (in puff pastry) and even Rice-a-Roni crawfish...)

All the recipes called for chopped onion and bell pepper. Most of them called for chopped celery too, but I didn't have any. Not all of them called for celery, though, so I figured I could leave it out. Some recipes didn't call for any cayenne or anything spicy. In fact, some recipes didn't call for any additional spices or herbs, or anything but the onions, bell peppers and celery, and I wanted Spice! There was one recipe that called for cream of celery soup and Rotel tomatoes. I don't have anything against Rotel, but we don't use cream-of soups here because they have wheat flour as a thickener and the fella's gluten-free. And in fact, most of the recipes called for a roux--flour and oil cooked brown. Which means I had to sub something else.

I decided on the first Crawfish Etouffee recipe in the Louisiana cookbook, mostly because it had the most spices in it. It also explained how to boil the whole crawfish, and called for "crawfish water" (aka, the water you cooked the crawfish in) in the recipe. Since I didn't boil my own crawfish and didn't have any crawfish water, I didn't drain the frozen crawfish, but put them en masse into my skillet, with the water from their package, and threw in a couple of seasonings from the boiling pot--like a bayleaf and some cayenne.

Not my recipe, but it looks similar

It turned out WONDERFUL. So, without further ado, here is the recipe for:

CRAWFISH ETOUFFEE, adapted to be gluten-free

1 pound (or so) cooked crawfish tails
1/4 cup butter
1 medium onion, chopped
1 bell pepper, chopped
2 ribs celery, chopped (or sub 1 tsp celery seed/salt)
3 cloves garlic, crushed/minced/pressed
1 Tablespoon tomato paste (I had some frozen, leftover from a previous recipe)
1/2 teaspoon basil
1/4 teaspoon thyme
1/4 teaspoon ground cloves (yes, really!)
1/4 teaspoon chili powder
1 Tablespoon lemon juice
1/2 cup crawfish water (here I added the 1/2 cup water, plus:
(1 bay leaf, and
(1/4 teaspoon red cayenne pepper, or to taste--I did just a smidge less than 1/4 tsp.)
1/2 cup water
salt and pepper to taste
1 Tablespoon cornstarch stirred into 1/4 cup cold water

The recipe also called for 1/2 cup chopped green onions and 2 Tablespoons chopped parsley for a final topping. I didn't have any, so I didn't use any. It also calls for 1/4 pound of butter, which I didn't notice until I was copying the recipe. I thought it said 1/4 cup, and so used a half-stick of butter, instead of a whole one. Half is plenty. (Actually, I reduced the recipe quite a bit, because this starts out with 10 pounds of whole crawdads.)

Start your rice cooking first. (If you're using a rice cooker--be sure to plug it in! I didn't notice mine wasn't, and probably simmered things too long.) Then start the etouffee.

Melt the butter in a large, heavy skillet. (I was afraid my cast iron skillet wouldn't be big enough, but it would be.) Add onions, bell pepper, celery and garlic, and saute over low heat about 20 minutes, or until the vegetables are very soft. Add the crawfish tails, tomato paste, seasonings and water. Mix well and simmer while your rice is cooking.  (You may want to add more water. I did. It didn't look liquid-y enough. I probably added about another cup.) Taste it and adjust flavorings--after you are through dancing around and crowing about how tasty it is--it will need at least a little salt, maybe some pepper, though with the cayenne, maybe not. Cover and let it simmer another 5 minutes. Stir in the cornstarch and water mixture, cook and stir until the etouffee is slightly thickened.

Remove from the heat and allow to stand 5 to 10 minutes, covered, to allow the seasonings to blend. Serve over rice. (My rice was really moist and sticky, because I put in 2 of the little measuring cups of rice, and then forgot, and added water to cook 3 cups. It was actually really nice with the etouffee, all sticky like that.)

If you don't need gluten-free, or have a corn allergy, or something--add 2 Tablespoons of flour to the melted butter and brown it a little before you add the onions and such. That's the only difference. You can always substitute 1/2 the amount of cornstarch for flour, up to 1/2 cup of flour. And don't brown the cornstarch. Makes it taste funny. Kind of floury. Just add it at the end, like this.

Oh, and this would be really good with shrimp too. Crawfish is a little bit sweet (like lobster), but anything you can do with crawfish, you can do with shrimp. Go for it!

Life with Alzheimery parents

Alzheimer's is a disease that continues to progress. And you just have to continue to cope.

It's been almost a year since Daddy had to go to the nursing home, closer to a year and a half since he was told he needed to stop driving. Mama's now failed her driving test. And she's just as stubborn about refusing to stop. She completely missed a stop sign and a yield sign, couldn't remember passing a school-zone sign...but she doesn't remember any of it now, though she acknowledged missing them at the time. So, we will have to take away her car and keys. Sigh.

And, at the nursing home, Daddy has taken it upon himself to become the lunchroom police. One of the little old men there will shout out occasionally. And when he shouted the other day, Daddy got up from his table, went over and bapped him on the head with his spoon. (sigh)

When the staff remonstrated with him, he said "Well, he shouldn't have yelled like that." Totally justified in his own mind for smacking the poor old guy. So, we're going to have to speak to Daddy--not that it will make much difference, because he won't remember us saying anything, and he will still think he was in the right. The doctor will be spoken to--maybe up some of his medicine, and we're probably going to have to start looking into dedicated Alzheimer's facilities. He doesn't wander, but he's bapping the other residents. At least it was with a spoon...

A good week

Harvest Moon Regatta off Galveston Island

So far, anyway, and I don't have any reason to think it won't go on being good. :)

I got my first review for Knight in Black Leather. It's lovely, (5 stars!) and Christine Klocek-Lim is my new best friend. :) Go read it. :) (Yes, I am over-using the smiley face emoticon.) But it is a really nice review. See?

"I laughed out loud during the first chapter. I sighed in happiness by the seventh and bit my lip in dismay by the twenty-third (I also might have cried a little, but I refuse to get into that)."

 I've been writing, but since I fell down on the job while I was out of town, and let myself continue to fall for a few more days, I'm only on Day 2 again. (Sigh)

Took Dolly the princess dog out for a walk yesterday, and she was a little pickle-dog this time. There were two doggies down playing on the beach, off-leash with their people, and it was all I could do to keep her from jumping off the seawall to go play with them. And that made her want to play with everybody else she saw. She's five years old. Aren't doggies supposed to slow down a little when they get that old? She dragged me across the street to wiggle at the neighbor. Pit bulls are strong doggies. And today, she's been a real whiny-baby, wanting me to come out and sit with her or play with her, or something.

I've been trying out some new recipes--a Mexican skillet chicken that's made like fried rice, only with enchilada sauce rather than soy sauce. Good stuff. And I made some marsala pork chops that were to die for.

I only made a couple of alterations in the recipe--you're supposed to bread them in bread crumbs, but since the fella's gluten-free, and I didn't feel like crushing any Crispix or corn flakes, I just didn't bread them. And I had a LOT of pork chops (or fork chops, as they're generally known in our house, because that's what one of the boys called them when he was little). Recipe called for 4 chops. I had 8 or 10. Hey, it worked. And I had some fresh mushrooms, so I sliced them up and threw them in the sauce. And I was probably a tad generous with the marsala wine. (The recipe called for one measly little tablespoon of marsala. A half cup of white wine (I used chardonnay), but only a tablespoon of marsala!) But when I got done--oh, it was SO good. My knees were all swoony.

Basically, you just fry up the fork chops, take them out, then saute a big mess of thin-sliced onion (with mushrooms if you want), add in a bunch of pressed/minced garlic, and when the onions are soft, throw in the wines and cook it down to almost nothing, then add in half a stick of butter. (No wonder it's so good!) But you don't need much with each pork chop.

Yes, I have been writing. This is the pantsiest thing I've written in a long time (meaning I didn't really have my world-building done when I started it, and didn't really know where I was going with it), but I'm discovering a lot of stuff now, near the end. Meaning I'll have some things to fix when I start putting it in the computer. But that's for later.

My book's gone live!

I have been busy, and I'm getting things done. I feel so accomplished today, and all because I baked a cake last night. (Well, sort of) But we'll come back to the cake.

The big news is that I have taken the plunge into the e-pub business. My first Gail Dayton book has gone live both at Kindle and Smashwords, and as soon as I get a move on, I'll have it up at Barnes & Noble.

Knight in Black Leather is the book that got me an agent. She and I both loved it, a bunch of New York editors said they loved it--but didn't know how to sell it. This is a contemporary romance. I wrote it before I took the plunge into fantasy and steampunk. I love my fantasy stories, but I also love me some contemporary romance. It's an older-woman-younger-man story, there's some suspense, some family conflict, secrets, angst, old wounds--all sorts of good stuff. And it's set in Pittsburgh. (The one in Pennsylvania, not the one in East Texas... That one doesn't have an H after the G.) Here's the cover copy:

A chance meeting on the dark winter streets of Pittsburgh brings widow Marilyn Ballard face to face with streetwise young biker Eli Court when he scares off a trio of wannabe gangsters. Later, she returns the favor, rescuing him from a beating, and their encounter becomes a chance to grow and heal from the pain scarring both their lives.

Marilyn's family disapproves of the relationship because of Eli's disreputable past, as well as their age difference. That past life--years spent in the deepest cesspools of the city--reaches out to pull Eli back into its depths, and he fears dragging Marilyn down with him. But she refuses to let him face his past enemies alone, even when his vow to protect a young boy exposes the still-open wounds of her heart, and puts them all in danger. Can they build a new life together, or will those long-denied secrets pull them under?

I hope y'all will give it a look-see. The first 2 chapters or so are up for y'all to sample.

Now I can talk about the cake. It's been forever since I actually baked a cake that didn't come out of a box. The Mexican Chocolate Pound Cake from one of this year's issues of Southern Living has been tempting me for a while, but I don't usually bake, because I'm pretty much the only one who eats the stuff I bake (the fella can't eat it, if it has flour in it, and the boy isn't big on sweets), and I can't afford it. But I really wanted to try this cake, because, hey--it's Mexican Chocolate. And since I'm going up to check on the parents this week, I can take a big hunk of cake with me to share with them and not eat most (all) of it myself--I baked the cake. (The picture is not MY cake, but it's the same recipe...)

The batter was like tasting chocolate clouds. The cake cooked in exactly the time the recipe said it would (this oven runs a little cool), AND it came out of the Bundt pan! I have been fighting with that pan since it was new, 30-mumble years ago when it was a wedding present. (35? Yeah, I think that's right.) It does not often let go of cakes. It likes to keep back a good half of the cake, most of the time, and force you to scrape it out in pieces. But this one came out! Score!!

You're supposed to serve it with sauce. Chocolate sauce--Mexican chocolate sauce, in fact. But the sauce requires heavy cream, which I did not have. So I had to run to the store to buy some. And since I also had to run to the store to buy ink for the printer to print out pictures of the grandkids for the parents, I didn't mind so much, especially since Office Depot is just down the strip mall from the grocery story. I came out with lots of other stuff, too--fancy file folders, a file storage box, etc. And I just have to share a picture of one of the grandboys dressed up for Halloween. He looks like such a cowpoke... (That's a lollipop stick!)

How to keep your head above water

That title sounds like a financial blog. Which this isn't. It's not even really an "organizational" blog, unless maybe it fits in the "Organization for the Terminally Disorganized" category. Because I am. Terminally disorganized, I mean. And I'm a Virgo. Go figure.

I guess that means I want to be organized. But if it happens, it doesn't happen for very long.

I have a computer file where I can write down the menus I've planned for the upcoming week--and I'll plan for two or three weeks running, then I don't touch that computer file for months--so long that I have trouble remembering where it is on the computer. (It's in the "recipes" folder.) (In case I forget again.)

I have a spreadsheet I've prepared for the e-publishing I'm planning to do. Here's hoping I remember to  put things into it for more than a month or so. I figure I'll be obsessive about keeping track of my sales for a week or two, and after that... Phhhtttt. I figure I'll be filling it frantically in when the fella informs me that I need to give him some info for the taxes.

That's usually how I go. In spurts. I seem to do pretty much everything in spurts.

Which, I suppose is my point. I can work with spurts. As long as I keep coming back to these things I want/need to do, and do them, I can get the things done that I want to get done. I like that "15-minutes at a time" thing that the FlyLady recommends. I can do anything for 15 minutes. Problem is--I usually forget to set the dang timer.

But I keep coming back. I've been "spurting"-- okay, sprinting in the writing. It's how I've made it to DAY 13 (!!!) of my 100 day challenge. I haven't made it much past Day 20, ever, yet. (You see what I mean about spurts?) But I keep coming back to it and starting again. The book is getting written.

I didn't go out and walk yesterday, even though it would have been my walking day. I meant to go, but I didn't. (I meant to do a lot of things yesterday, and didn't. Sigh.) So I went today, and I'll go again tomorrow. I got back to it.

That's the secret. Just keep going back. If you slip up, get back into it. Keep showing up.

That said, I walked all the way to 45th Street today--a mile, one way, from my house. That may not sound impressive, but I'm closer to 60 than 50, and I'm fat. I'm impressed with myself, so there.

I passed the new Fort Crockett park, where the dolphin sculpture is. I did look at the painted dolphins, and that's completely new cement. They couldn't really do anything with the old cement. The dolphins are painted in the exact same colors, same design. They look great.

This picture is of the guys planting the palm trees in the planter boxes. There are 12 trees in each box, and salt-resistant plants below them, and in the street-side boxes. They imbedded iron stars in the top of the planters--you can see them as dark spots--to keep the skateboarders from skating up there. And there are benches on the Gulf side of the big boxes, so weary walkers like me can rest up and look at the waves. Pretty cool, IMO. :)

Progress

Today, I wrote a bio for the e-pub books I have planned. Why does it take so much longer to write this kind of stuff than it does to write story?

I also wrote cover copy/descriptions for the first one of the books. I'm getting friends to help me with it. But it's progress.

AND, it is DAY 8 (right?) on my writing challenge. I didn't get as much written as I'd hoped, because the boy was awake this a.m. and kept wanting to show me stuff. He did finally get the hint.

I also got started late with my writing projects, because I went out for a walk this a.m. and walked all the way down to the dolphin statue. It looks MUCH better now than it used to.

Frito-Lay donated a bunch of money to fix up the little seawall park there where the dolphin statue is. They've rebuilt the plaza, put in a bunch of planters and benches and solar-power lights and stuff, and will build a big shade pavilion once all the palm trees and plants are in the planter.
 

The summer after Hurricane Ike (remember that one? No? Yeah, well, Lehman Brothers went bankrupt the Monday after Ike hit on Saturday...) it looked really beat up. The storm surge washed all the sand and stuff out from under the concrete and beat it all to heck. I don't know if they poured and painted new concrete for the dolphin mural, or put back and repaired and touched up the old stuff. I looked today, while I was out, and really couldn't tell.

It's gorgeous out these days. Not too hot to get out and walk, a nice breeze off the water--and around here, not too hot does mean up to 90F/32C and a little above. Too hot is 95F/35C and above, here on the island, because it's usually accompanied by considerable humidity. It was around 85F/29C this a.m. when I was walking. We've had a cold front. But it's still in the 80s by 9 a.m. Our fall. My hibiscus are blooming like crazy, because it's not so hot and dry...

Yeah, sorry. Didn't mean to make y'all jealous...

The Rat in the Dark

While we were off in the wilds of Valley Mills, Texas, (and if you know where Valley Mills is, you're doing good) (It's out toward Cranfills Gap...) we had a bit of an adventure in the night. We were out in the middle of nowhere, after all, with varmints and all kinds of critters in the fields surrounding us. And, being women of a certain age, we tended to have to get up in the middle of the night to visit the facilities. (There was indoor plumbing.)

Well, one of those nights, one of our number rose in the darkness and ventured to the facilities, using her cell phone as a flashlight to light her way so she wouldn't trip over something and kill herself, and when she got into the restroom, she saw something black and scary on the floor. She didn't have her glasses on (as mentioned, we are of a certain age, and all near-sighted), the phone light was mostly dim, and she couldn't reach the light switch to turn on the real light and see what in blazes it was. Especially since she was pretty sure it was a rat. She crept forward, holding the phone out toward the rat, while reaching with the other hand for the light--which was on the other side of the room near the other door--until finally the other one of us (who wasn't me, because I was asleep) informed her that it was my sock.

I thought I had retrieved all of my clothes when I got into my nightgown, but apparently, one of my socks got away and stayed behind to play Halloween games. My friend picked it up and tossed it out of the bathroom. I think she was trying to put it with my stuff, but the next morning, it was next to one of the support posts. Maybe it crawled over there. I picked it up and put it in my suitcase...and an hour or so later, I saw it on the floor again. That sock was determined to escape! It didn't stay put until I stuffed it down in a pocket and zipped it closed. I hope I got home with it. But we had a good laugh about how scared D was about that wayward sock.

I am making progress in my self-publishing venture. Yes, I will put up Heart's Magic when I get the rights to it--unless Tor actually decides to publish it. I am also doing a contemporary romance with no fantasy whatsoever in it--Knight in Black Leather--and a contemporary-set fantasy romance with a hero who comes from an alternate world--Heart of Stone. After that, I'm not sure what I'm going to do. It all depends on what I have, what I write, what I want to write... We will see.

I am on DAY 7 of my challenge. Got 4 pages written, and the fella came home to pack an ice chest for his trip to Austin, and wanted to converse, of all things. So I stopped sprinting.

The guys moved my bookcase out of the closet in my office while I was away, and moved a gun safe in. The fella doesn't like my bookcase where they put it. All my books are now in boxes, stacked in the floor in here. I am not happy. I'm not mad, or even upset about it. I knew they were going to do it. But neither am I exactly happy about it. I'd really like to have the books more accessible, and my office less stacked up.

Also, I'm trying to clean my desk off, along with all the other stuff I'm trying to do, and found two pieces of plastic that I have no idea what they are, nor what they are for. Just strangely shaped pieces of plastic.

In the steps toward publishing, I have fixed my Paypal account, I think. I have my e-mails straightened out. I have about 6 e-mail accounts just now--and I upgraded my web hosting plan today. It will take a day or two to get the upgrade through, and another while for me to figure out how to make it do what I want it to do, but hopefully by next week, I'll have my website updated and I'll be ready to move on to the next step.

Sprinting while sitting down

Two HOT writers, getting ready to "sprint"

So. I went to the annual HOT (Heart of Texas) Romance Writers fall retreat last week. My writer friends and I took several days ahead of the official retreat and went out to the ranch to retreat early and get some writing done.

It was great! Great to be out there with friends, great to have the chance to write, great to just think, talk and breathe writing. Not so great--the up-close-and-personal encounters with bugs, and the temperature, which wavered from too cold to too hot and couldn't really be fixed right. But bugs and heat can be endured.

The pond behind the "cabin" was way down, due to the drought, and a lot of the trees had died. It was sad to see them. Hopefully, there will be some rain--before next year, please--and the creeks will come back and new trees will grow.

One of the best things we did during the long weekend was "sprint" writing. We would set a timer for 20 minutes and Just Write. For 20 minutes. When the timer went off, we would see how many words we'd written, take a little break to walk around, go potty, grab more coffee, whatever, and five or so minutes later, we'd start the timer up again.

I was pretty consistent. Most times, I got about 250 words. One of the ladies sometimes got 1,000 words or so--but she was at the end of her story and knew exactly what was happening, who had the POV, where she was going--she was in race mode. Sometimes, one of us would get only 57 words, or 84. Not very many at all. But, the important thing was that for that 20 minutes, we didn't do anything but write. We could focus, because we knew that when the bell went off, then we could check the e-mail, or look at the texts, or go to the restroom. It's not hard to put something off for 20 minutes. And it's surprising how much you can write in that length of time.

So, that's what I brought home with me. I have a kitchen timer I carry around with me, to help me focus on what I'm doing. You know--the "I'm going to do this for the next 15 minutes" thing. Anyway, it works real well for helping me do the sprint writing. I got 15 pages written while I was in Valley Mills. Today, I got four done, in the hour and a half I wrote this morning. Oh, and since I wrote every day I was gone, that makes today Day 6 in the 100 words for 100 days challenge, which I haven't gotten to 30 days yet. Maybe my challenge should be 100 words for 30 days...

I have to share the birds that have been poking around our neighborhood for the last couple of weeks. I've lived here four years now, and have never seen American white ibis (I looked them up) anywhere but out on the beach or in the marshes. But most afternoons, there they are, strolling around in the neighbors' yards, hunting for food. I assume they've left their usual haunts because of the drought, like most everything else.

Pretty cool, huh?

Well, I thought so, anyway.

I am working on pulling some books together to get up on Amazon and Smashwords and B&N. Once I get the rights back to Heart's Magic (Harry and Elinor's story), I'll probably e-pub it, too, but it's a long slow process. Figuring out how to do the self-publishing is also a long, slow process, but I will get it licked!

Yeah, yeah, yeah

I know. I've been AWOL.

First, I had company. I think. It was a long time ago. Then there was the Bastrop County fire. My parents and youngest sister and her family live in Bastrop County. The fire was mostly closer to Bastrop, but it got pretty close. That's the view from Baby Sister's back yard during the fire.

And since the fire was between them and our brother's house up north of Austin (it's closer), and the kids were out of school (well, the nephew who's a freshman at Texas State was sent back to San Marcos), it seemed like a good time for a road trip to the beach. So they checked Daddy out of the nursing home and everybody came to Galveston, including Lucy the cranky old lady terrier mix and Flash the fish. (He's a Siamese fighting fish, and came in a canning jar.)

We had a really nice time, believe it or not, even though we spent a lot of time watching TV and online looking for news about the fires. Since there was a fire north of Houston at the same time, most of the local news was about that fire, but we did get the Austin stations on the internet.

We worked Daddy about half to death. Tuesday, we walked him and Mama around the block. Then in the afternoon, we made him walk down to the beach with us. It's not but about 2-1/2 blocks, but this is a man who gets up in the morning, eats breakfast, takes a nap, eats lunch, takes another nap, eats dinner, and goes to bed after watching a little TV. He's still skinny as a rail. And he took a nap on the beach. (We had some big beach towels spread out, so he didn't get too sandy.) I went out in the water with the kids. Laura and her 21-year-old daughter Molly hung on to Mama so she could stand in the surf without getting knocked over--that surf just washes the sand right out from under your feet, besides being surfy and shoving at you.

We went out to good ol' Shrimp 'N Stuff for supper and Daddy missed the step as we were leaving, and fell and skint his elbow all up. (Ack!) (also, sigh). He got blood on his shirt--just a scrape, but sometimes they will really bleed. The fella got him all bandaged up, and he went to bed fine, but the next morning, I had to make him go change his bloody shirt, because he put it on again. You kind of have to take away his dirty clothes to keep him from wearing them again. (sigh again) Anyway, they all left to go back home Wednesday afternoon, except for Molly, who gets migraines from smoke. It was really smoky back in the fire area. She stayed with her boyfriend, who lives somewhere in the area--but there are a lot of south-of-Houston suburbs...

That's pretty much all the excitement we've had. I'm trying to get some writing done. Trying to get my "independent publishing" stuff set up. (Argghh!) Every time I think I'm ready to upload a story, I realize there's something else I need to get ready first. I keep backing up, and backing up... It's just craziness.

Now that the heat has finally sort of moderated (It's still reaching the high 80s to low 90s pretty much every day), I'm walking more. I even have gotten myself back into decent enough shape that I took the Dolly-dog out for a walk yesterday. She's put on a little weight, gotten herself out of shape, so that her tongue was dragging by the time we reached the halfway point, so she wasn't dragging me so much. I also found a whole angel-wing shell, about 5 inches long (okay, maybe only 4-1/2), out on the beach, and I've seen some new birds out fishing. At first I thought it was a snowy egret that was just silhouetted in the sun. But when I got a better angle on it, it was pretty much the same color as the sand. And it was jumping around and raising its wings and--well, dancing in the surf as it fished. I think it was a reddish egret, going by the color and behavior mostly. Its neck wasn't that red, and I don't remember the pink on the beak--but I think the young birds aren't as red as the older ones, so maybe it was a teenager reddish egret.

So, anyway, that's all the news that's not too boring. I'd swear I'll keep up better here on the blog, but I hate to swear to things I'm pretty sure I will eventually do, or not do, as the case may be. I do think about posting. I'll see something pretty, and think--"Ooh, that would be cool to share." And then I don't. Sigh, yet again.

Day 1, yet again

And I was doing so well! I'd made it all the way up to Day 25! And then I went to visit the parents. It's really hard to make time to write when I'm up there. But I'm back at work again on the writing. It's moving right along, but it's going to be longer than a novella, I think. Maybe not too long--I just don't know... However, I am about to have my main characters meet the scientists. We'll see how it goes.

Don't know what else to tell you... I need to start typing in the story. I am meeting a client tomorrow to pick up her manuscript to copyedit. My first non-Carina freelance job. Our visitor is still visiting. Not getting so creative with the vegetarian diet any more. My brain hurts. That's probably why I'm not writing much of a blog today. I can't think of anything to write about. Y'all have any suggestions?

Lazy day

It's been a lazy day, and will continue to be, I imagine. I'm going to get up in a little bit and go wash the knives in the kitchen. I've written the day's pages (DAY 18!!) and I am now posting a blog stating that I have written my day's pages.

I do still have a little laundry to fold for the week, and probably have a couple more housekeeping things to do, but yeah, it's a lazy day. I don't have anywhere I have to go. Nothing I have to do. I'm actually thinking about heading out to the big mall to do a little shopping, because the end of season sales have started. Or maybe I'll sit around the house and read. I did go get all those library books after all.

The books on my list of "read" books are starting to back up. I'm getting them slowly into my GoodReads list, but I'm slow. They keep getting backed up because I try to write something about them, and that takes a bit of time, which makes me slower. And then I do things like read 3 books in a day. (I read Amazon Queen by Lori Devoti, A Matter of Class by Mary Balogh, and Almost Perfect by Susan Mallery all yesterday.)

So yeah, things are pretty much the same as always. I'm writing, but the rest of life is slow.

Following the story

Six years ago, less a week, I wrote a blog post titled "Protect the Work." It's all about how, once you decide what story you want to write, you need to protect it from outside influences.

It's an important concept. One new writers tend to have trouble with. It's more "You don't like that? Fine, I can change it!" Of course, there are some new writers for whom their every word is golden and should never be touched by human hands (or pens). Both attitudes create problems.

I firmly believe a writer should protect his/her work. Know the story you're writing--what kind of story it is and what you want to say with it. What it's about. And protect it. Write that story.

But be prepared to follow the story where it goes. Down whatever path it might wander.

Stories do that, you know. They're flighty creatures. They tend to take it into their heads to go see what it might look like over here. Or, what about that? What if that happens instead? Plotters do all of this wandering about during their plotting phase, before they really get started with the writing. Pantsers do it while they're writing, in the midst of the writing. Those of us who fall somewhere in between--the story can make us crazy. But we do have room to follow the story where it leads. 'Cause it's going to lead you.

In the Rose books, I really had no intention of Torchay being a major character. The two main characters were going to be Kallista and Stone. And Stone IS a major character. But Torchay...just sorta -- happened. The plot's still the same as the outline I came up with. But the story went entirely astray from my original ideas. And it's the better for it.

Writers need to be able to hold two contradictory ideas in their heads at the same time. Because we DO two opposing things at the same time. We know what the story is. But we have to be open to changing it as we go along, as the story unfolds.

I am currently writing a steampunk novella. I'm trying to make it erotic, but don't know how successful I am at that, because it's not going exactly like I thought it would. It's still a steampunk novella--though the steam and the punkness hasn't quite kicked in yet--but it's veering. Or maybe it's taking side trips. I'm not driving straight ahead like I thought I would.

Maybe it's the novella bit I'm having trouble with. I have always had trouble writing short. I'm always coming up with this cool bit, and that great character, and this other neat story angle. This is why I need a road map, and a ruthless red pen. So I can keep myself on the proper path, and then cut out all the extraneous foliage--er, verbiage--when I get to wherever it is I'm going.

That said, I came up with a fabulous detail for the ending of this story yesterday. The story still ends with the sacrifice ending, with the hopeful twist--but there's a twist to the twist that I really like. And I can't tell you what it is, because that would be a spoiler.

So I'm on DAY 17, and I went to the dentist and got the chip on the inside of my lower incisor filled in and smoothed out in just 30 minutes! And I need to go beat the boy about the head and shoulders. He's still asleep, and it's 3 p.m. Shame on him! I am reading too many books today. :)