How is Reality TV like Genre Fiction?

I was scanning the blogs I have come to read semi-regularly, and one of them had a post about Reality Television.

Now, I don't watch much reality TV. I don't like the Survivor-type shows, or the Bachelor shows, or the ones where they try to screw up peoples' lives. I have to admit that I am even enough of a prehistoric antediluvian (if those words don't mean the same thing), that I don't watch American Idol.

I do however like a good many of the "fix-up-your house/yard" shows, and will watch Dancing with the Stars with the fella. (He also likes Iron Chef--which I have to admit is sometimes fun.) Still, I'm just not a big reality TV fan. So when I read this post about how writers like Reality TV, I thought "pfffftthh--yeah, right." I do see how other writers might like it, but frankly, I think Reality TV is far less real than the scripted stuff, because People just Don't let out their real gut-deep stuff. We hang onto our secrets.

Anyway, one thing said hit me.

The plot takes the viewers on a journey, from the opening credits of the first episode to the closing credits of the finale. The number of episodes and even types of challenges might remain the same from season to season but, couple it with the characters, and the story becomes something a bit different each time.

And suddenly, I had a rebuttal for those who complain about how genre fiction always has such a predictable ending. (Although, it's usually only romance that gets those kinds of complaints, sometimes one gets them for other sorts of genres.) Reading a romance or a mystery novel is about the Journey and the Characters, not the ending.

Admittedly, the folks who sneer at romance and other commercial fiction also usually sneer at Reality TV--but regular, scripted television shows are the same. Except in that case, you even have the same characters facing the same kinds of challenges. Characters discover a crime. Characters solve a crime. The end. Then again, those folks sneer at pretty much all television. I tell ya, it's almost like you're flat not supposed to enjoy anything at all.

These are the same people who get all shocked when you talk about reading something Just For Fun. Who think you must read Edifying Fiction (or strictly non-fiction).

Well, phooey on that. By the time you get out of school (and some of you are taking longer about that than others), life's too short to spend time reading a book (or watching television) unless you Enjoy it. Don't think you "ought" to read this or that. If you like it, then read it. If you don't, then don't--and don't apologize to anybody for it.

No wonder there are so few readers left--when so many in the world are sucking all the FUN out of reading!

Okay, I will get off my soapbox now. I'm just frustrated today, I guess, by all the people who seem determined to suck the fun out of--reading, if not life...

No writing this week. I did get all my revisions in the computer for the Old Spirits partial. I printed out the first couple of chapters of New Blood to read at ApolloCon. Never did put that on my website, did I? Sorry.

I'm hoping I won't have to go look after the parents before Sunday afternoon--Mom had surgery that was more extensive than we expected (still relatively minor), so... I'm pretty sure I'll have to go up sometime, though, because I'm not sure just how competent Daddy is with the looking-after.

OH. And the boy wrecked his car. Nobody hurt. Something of a slow-mo crash--low speeds. The other person got a ticket, but his car isn't drivable, and this is the third time it's had front-end damage. (I don't think we're counting the tree that fell on it...) We may have to get a new car. But for right now, we're dealing with being a 2 car family with 3 drivers. He dropped me off today, and will pick me up, but I'm leaving the island tomorrow, so he and his father will have to deal with car issues then.

Rain! and Hecticness

It's been a very dry spring on my island. We just barely missed making the Top 5 Dryest Springs Ever because we had a little stormlet two days before the official first day of summer. Then on the first day of summer, while I was driving back to town from Fort Worth, The Sky Didst Open and The Deluge Didst Pour Forth.

While I was on the highway. And I had to visit the little girls' room (so to speak). I'd've made it all the way home, except everybody slowed way down--because when the Sky Opens here, the Deluge Really Does Pour Forth, and the freeways tend to flood three or four inches deep. And when they flood, people hydroplane and crash into the other cars if they drive too fast. So it's a good thing that people slow down. But I had to get off the freeway and find a pit stop. Then I had to squeeze my way back amongst the cars driving slowly in the pouring rain, because it didn't show any signs of slowing. And it didn't. Rained all the way home. Rained me into the house. Stopped long enough for the fella to bring my stuff in the house without raining on everything. Then it started raining again.

Rained again today. Hard, but not terribly long--though it's still sorta sprinklish. We have friends in town, from our little Panhandle town, come to the beach. It will be fun to get to see them again, but there's a lot of cleaning up that has to be done. And grocery shopping. I did already get by the fish market... You know we have to serve boiled fresh shrimp to all our visitors.

This is going to be a VERY hectic week. Besides our visitors, our "bureau" at the paper is short one person, because she got slapped in the hospital before she keeled over, and they need me to put in extra hours, if I can, but there's a funeral I ought to go to (relative of a relative), and I'm taking Friday to head over to ApolloCon. There's a couple of other things too, that I may skip out on--or maybe not. Depends on how everything else goes. But I'm tired.

And I'm trying to pull together a partial of Old Spirits to send the editor. I think my chapters look pretty good. But I need to write a synopsis that makes sense. That's not going to happen this week. Not as crazy as life has gotten just now, but I'm thinking about it. Trying to figure out how to summarize stuff I've written, and sort of exactly what will happen in the parts I haven't written. I think I need to pull a big chunk of courtroom stuff out... of all the courtroom stuff, maybe. It's very loosey-goosey just now, and I know I'll need to tighten the heck out of it before it's done. But for now, I guess I'll go with it.

Going to read from New Blood at ApolloCon at my reading Friday night. Hope a few people will be there early enough to want to hear it. Have to print it out to be ready to read.

Here I have written this huge long blog post, and I haven't even mentioned the cool beach stuff. Like, beginning last Friday, when I went out to walk on the beach (sans Dolly), and the fish were WAY in shore. And of course, the pelicans and dolphins (and I even saw a skimmer, which was way cool) were inshore chowing down on them. I love to watch the brown pelicans fishing, because they're so cool about it. When the fish are thick, the pelicans will fly just ten or 12 feet above the water, and when they see a fish, the feet will drop like webbed landing gear, and BAM! They'll hit the water. They dive so fast, and there's always a splash--a big one, given the size of the birds. But it doesn't faze them--up they pop, maybe float a minute, and off they go, into another take-off to get ready for another dive. They can dive from as high as 50 feet without getting hurt, but given how murky the water often is, I wonder how they can see fish in it. Maybe that's why they fly lower. But then, I have seen them dive from way high up, so they must be able to spot them. It's so much fun to watch that drop--Bam! (er, splash?)

Today, I took Dolly back out again. She's really pretty good, but I think I'm letting her get into some bad habits. I think she figured out how to jump around in the surf while on the leash--she can run in circles and still run and jump. I think she watches for the bigger waves (still not very big, but she's short) so she can jump them and let them float her a second or two. There were all kinds of dead fish on the shore--some of them really big. I saw one that was a good 2 feet by 1 foot from dorsal to ventral. Big fish. I don't know if they just got stuck in the shallow water, or what, but... Lots of great big feathers from the pelicans too. Dolly couldn't figure out how to pick one of those up to carry it with her. There were big washes of broken shells that were still big enough to hurt my tootsies. And more sargasso, but not enough to make blankets. After the sargasso cometh the jellyfishes... Come on, seaweed! Keep coming. Don't want jellyfishes.

Since Catie has encouraged me to walk to Rivendell, I'm going to do it. I don't remember how far it is, but I've walked 6 miles on the way. According to the Eowyn Challenge, I have made it into Tookland. It's going to take me a Really Long Time to do this. At least the only thing I have to climb are the rock jetties, every half mile or so...

Words written--who knows? (I've typed in 92 pages--but I've written lots more than that)--I did write 20 pages last week.

Miles walked to Rivendell: 6

Forty-Two

Those of you from the South know that I am not making up random numbers to title my blog. Forty-Two is a game. I didn't realize that it was also called Texas Forty-two, or The National Game of Texas--but I am not surprised. Forty-two is played with dominoes, and it has a little bit in common with Bridge, because the person who wins the bid chooses trumps. It has a little bit in common with Spades, because it's a lot easier to learn than Bridge, and it is generally a fast and furious fun time.

Monday night, we had a couple over for root beer/Coke floats and Forty-two. I wound up partnering with the male half of the couple, and We Wiped The Floor with our respective life partners. First game wasn't quite a skunking. They won one hand. The second game was neck and neck, but my partner bid two marks (we're not purists who actually count up the points in a game--if you win a round--one shuffle--you get a mark. Period.) and I helped him win it. It's always more fun when you're winning.

It was fun finding a new family who plays Forty-two. In our families--both the fella's and mine--you learn how to play Forty-two at least by the time you turn 13. It's possible to learn it as young as 10, but really, you're not ready for the cut-throat strategizing, or counting the spots and remembering what's fallen--and all the bazillion rules and variations on rules and ways to bid and make a bid--until you're around 13. I have many, many memories of family Forty-two tournaments.

Once, when I was in high school, we had gone to Yellowstone Park for a weekend, and after dark, we needed a game to play in the cabin we were renting. I don't think the sisters were old enough yet to be in the Forty-two game, but my brother and I had learned. Except we didn't bring the dominoes. So we went over to the Old Faithful gift shop to buy some. And the only dominoes we could find were in a travel set. Instead of the nice 1-inch by 2-inch playable dominoes we had at home, these were about 1/2-inch by 1-inch, without much thickness at all. See, you have to set your domino hand up on their edges so nobody else can see them, because it's really hard to fan a set of seven dominoes. But these travel-sized things were so narrow, they kept falling over, so everybody could see who had the double-five or the six-four. (Which is bad. Take my word.) We eventually wound up holding them in our hands. These were small enough you could kind of line them up on your palm and see them okay, and keep everybody else from seeing them. I remember laughing a lot that night.

There is usually a lot of laughing during Forty-two games. There is also a fair amount of fist-shaking, and name-calling. (You gunky! is a popular one.) When the middle sister had finally achieved the proper age to be taught how to play, I remember that the brother had just learned a new word: Renege. And so, being an obnoxious teen at the time, he kept accusing everybody--especially the sister--of reneging. Of course, she had never heard of the word, and had no idea what he was accusing her of, and--being a touchy pre-teen--quickly grew offended. So the next time he spouted off "You reneged!" she came back with "Well, you bedogged!"

If he was going to make up insults, so was she. We still accuse each other of bedogging.

I really like to play against my father-in-law, though it's not quite so much fun to play as his partner. He has this not-so-good habit of bidding on his partner's hand. Or on, well--nothing. Just because he hasn't had a chance to bid in a while. And this is despite the fact that there is no such thing as a re-shuffle. If the bid goes around and nobody bids, the shuffler (there is no deal, each player has to draw their own dominoes) HAS to take the bid. He hates the force bid--but he'll bid on nothing anyway. Makes him easy to set.

I have more Forty-two stories. But I think that's enough of a riff on dominoes for today. I love dominoes. The world would be a better place, I think, if more people played Forty-two, and learned how to call each other gunky and bedogger, and still be friends.

Oh. I wrote 2.5 pages Monday, 4 pages yesterday, and 4.5 pages today. Not bad.

And I think I'm going to (maybe) try to "walk to Rivendell" which is 458 miles. Which will probably take me better than a year. I did about 2 miles today. With the dog. Exhausting.

In the Water!

I finally got in the water for the first time this year, and it was as wonderful as I thought it would be. I really like the Gulf. I like the warmth. I like the mild waves. I like floating and, well, I just like it. I wanted to go out this weekend, but you know, there are rules about swimming.

I believe in the Buddy system. You just do not go swimming--especially in the Gulf of Mexico, off the Texas coast--without a buddy. Yes, there is a lifeguard, but you need somebody there With you, paying attention To you, who will notice when you're not where they thought you were. So, I had informed the fella I wanted to go swimming. But he wasn't feeling well. (He's been dealing with allergies and bronchitis all week.) I was hoping I could get him to at least come down to the beach with me to sit on the sand and be my swim buddy while not swimming. But the boy got off work early. He came home at 6 p.m., instead of the 11 p.m. hour we were expecting him. And I got him to come with me.

We also took the dog, because Dolly likes to swim too. We walked over. I still think that's total coolness, that I can WALK to the beach to swim. We had to take turns going out to floating depth, because dogs are short and one of us needed to stay with her in the shallows. I was walking back to our stuff to put the boy's glasses on his shoe when he was out past the breakers, and Dolly slipped her collar. She didn't mean to--she just wanted to go sniff something else--but she came back and let me put the collar back on her. There was a little Yorkie yapdog barking like crazy at her, and she wanted to go over and say hello, and we were mean and wouldn't let her, because the Yorkie was behaving so aggressively, it would get itself eaten. And then people would be mad.

I had a wonderful time in the water. I went out twice to float--just laid back and let the water rock me. Got caught once when it broke over my head, but I didn't have to touch bottom. Just spit out the water and straightened out again. Oh, and I was body-surfing in, and got stuck in water just a tad too shallow. See, it's kind of a production for me to stand up when I'm on the floor, or the ocean bottom (those bad knees again)...and the water kept knocking me over before I could get up. It got rather comical, before the next breaker sort of pushed me up to my feet... The second time, I started walking a little sooner.

Then we had dinner and all of us went out to see the new Indiana Jones movie. I enjoyed it, though the fantasy elements had me rolling my eyes a little. Just once. It was fun.

Father's Day, the boy offered to take his dad out to dinner at the restaurant where he works, but since the fella will be having lunch there three times this week, he said "anywhere but there," even if it is one of the nicest places in town. (Darn.) So we went to the Chinese buffet, because the Japanese place is closed for lunch. And we took naps and I had a really good Father's Day. Not so sure about the father in the family... ;)

This will be a very, very busy week, with stuff going on just about every evening. No, not just about. Every. Single. Evening. And to get everything done, it cuts into my morning writing time. I am going to work like mad to try to get at Least 2 pages done every day--and I'm afraid that will be a tough job. Still, I did get my 2 pages for today, between sticking a chicken in the crock pot for supper, doing laundry, cleaning up for group meeting at our house tonight (still have to buy ice cream on the way home...), and... I'm sure there was something else I was doing this morning. Oh yes! cleaning the boy's bathroom, because he didn't do it. And we're having people over tonight. (The ice cream is to make root beer floats.) 2 pages. Basically, I finished up a "confrontation" scene. I had ideas on where to take it next, but had to write them in the margin, because I was just out of time.

(Had to go to the bank, the post office (My bookrak books came in, Yay!), and to Comcast to take back the old converter box and get a new one, before work. Fortunately the Comcast office is right next door to the newspaper office, literally.)

Who knows when I will get to go back into the water... I've got a "roundtable critique" thing in Fort Worth this weekend, ApolloCon next weekend and... well, there's bound to be something else going on, but darned if I know what it is. At least it doesn't take long to get to the beach... :)

When I don't WRITE FIRST

This is the granddog. Dolly wanted me to throw her bone for her when I took her picture. She's not jealous of her toys at all, though she does like to play tug-of-war. She was just home for the weekend when I took the pic. She's spending the summer with us now, and has filled out a little more. She's just now getting to be a year old. I've enjoyed having a dog to play with and take out to walk.

We went walking this morning and she worked me hard--didn't pull or anything. She was very good on the leash. But she likes to walk fast, and I hate to hold her back, so I walked a little faster. Which is good for me, so I probably ought to take her out more often, huh?

I was fussing at her, trying to get her to hold still in this other picture, and she dropped her bone and put on that "I'm in trouble?" look... No, I didn't crop or compress the pictures. Should have, but I didn't. I was mad at the computer, because it wasn't downloading the pictures the way I wanted it to. I did finally get them downloaded--after only a little cussing...

I've been wanting to share pictures of the granddoggy--and to put some pictures on the blog just because they look nice, but, well... Mostly I blog at the dayjob these days, and I don't have my pictures there. I e-mailed these to myself. I'll have to do that more often. :)

Don't know what I have to blog about. Went walking today. The beach was lovely. Not so much seaweed today.

I did get six good pages written yesterday...and today, I wrote a paragraph. I think it had more than one sentence in it.

See, I've listened twice now to a workshop on Writer's Bootcamp, which discusses lowering goals to raise production. If your goal is one sentence, and you write two, you've achieved 200 per cent of your goal. (Right, math person?) Anyway, I'd like to write more than one paragraph, but --and I do know exactly what I did wrong.

I did not Write First.

I've learned over the years, especially when I got to write full time, that if I am going to get any writing done, I have to Write First. Before I look at the computer, package up books to mail, print out critiques for writing chapter meetings--any of it--I have to write.

Now, it is permissible to shower and have breakfast, and even to go out for a walk with Dolly (or without) (in which case, the walk comes between breakfast and shower, 'cause, you know, one must wash off the sand and salt and sweat--this IS Texas. The temp may only be 87, but there's, like, 900% humidity which makes it feel like it's 418 degrees...) before I start writing. I can also put dishes in the dishwasher, or put laundry on to wash (preferably not both), or make necessary phone calls before I start to wash. (The phone calls really need to come before the writing, because otherwise the phone calls get forgotten and my meds don't get renewed, or my hair gets longer and longer and longer--which state it is in right now. Way Too Long and Shaggy.) But those are the only permitted chores. Otherwise, the writing HAS to come first.

And today, I didn't. I needed to send an important e-mail, and I needed to see if another e-mail had come in. (I hadn't checked e-mail since Monday, so there were a lot, and I didn't read very many of them.) I needed to download pictures from the camera. I needed to print some stuff out, except I couldn't remember where I'd put the files. Then I got out the pages I wrote yesterday. Then there were the books I finished that ought to go on Shelfari (I know. Time-wasters...) Then I looked at what I wrote yesterday.

I added a phrase here, moved parts of a sentence around there to give it the highest impact. I clarified that bit and took this other thing completely out. Then I had to put a sentence in another spot. I tinkered. And when it was time to go on, I wrote my two sentences. (I'm pretty sure there were two.) And came to a stuttering halt.

I HATE this. I want to be able to sit down and just write. And I'm fumbling all over the place. Summer usually sucks when it comes to the writing. There's a lot of stuff going on. I'm traveling a lot, have commitments in the evenings, more people at the house. But those are just excuses. Because if I remember to Write First, I can get it done. Sometimes it comes slow, but it does come. I just have to Write. First.

sigh.

Graduations, sisters and seaweed

So, we went to the niece's graduation last Friday. I took the day off work so we could arrive early enough to help out with the shishkebab party, and got to cut up potatoes, peppers, melons and strawberries to go on skewers. The potatoes and peppers were cooked (with some pretty cool marinated meat). The fruit (which included both green and orange melon and pineapple) was not. (Though I did put some pineapple on to cook, actually.) I got to visit with the sister AND the brother and various in-laws. The nephews condescended to at least say hello, though not much else. They're mostly at that monosyllabic teenaged or pre-teen phase. The nieces did chat more. (There are only two of them, and one is only 8. But her almost 18-year-old sister did visit quite a bit.) It was fun to get to see everybody. This leaves only 5 more kids on my side of the family still in public school. These kids are growing up.

My sister has graduated from college with her teaching degree--just three or four weeks before her daughter finished high school--and has a line on a job in the school where they live. We've all got our fingers crossed.

We came on back home Saturday, because we've got a lot going on this week. And now I try to think what it is, I can't. Lots of church stuff going on. We've been experiencing house shopping with the daughter--they have now made an offer, and it was accepted, so they'll be moving soon if all goes as it should. Hopefully I won't have to go help them move. I've moved too much already this year.

I've been trying to get back in synch with the writing. It's going a tiny bit better. I got 3 pages written today, rather than the 2 pages I wrote yesterday. Maybe I can write 4 pages tomorrow.

I went walking on the beach Monday and took the granddog. I'd been nervous about taking her with me, not knowing how she would behave, but I broke down Monday morning and just did it. Dolly did jump over the seat to sit in the back seat, rather than the back cargo area, but didn't move any farther than that in the car. And when we got to the beach, she was a perfectly behaved little doggy. She didn't even chase the birds, much less try to play with the few kids out that early. We didn't walk in the water much. The seaweed has come in.

Oh BOY has the seaweed come in. It made an ankle-deep blanket about 3 or 4 feet deep right at the water's edge, because there was so much of it, the water couldn't push it any higher on the sand. It kind of dammed the water up, and if we wanted to walk on the water side of the sargasso, we were almost knee deep in the water when the waves came in. And it was this thick along the whole mile course that we walked, and all the miles we drove past.

Dolly's a medium-sized doggy, so she walked a little faster than I do, which got me walking a little faster. Not as much faster as to keep up with Dolly, but faster. I'm a tad sore today.

So, that's the news--pitiful, isn't it? But I'm going to leave things at that.

Blown Away

The wind has been blowing like crazy the past few days--knocking over the glider-swing in the back yard every night (as well as the big trashcan) and scaring the granddog into barking. There's sand blowing across most of the streets in town and piling up in intersections or along curbs or the risers of the stairs up the seawall.

My hair, which needed cutting about 6 weeks ago, is at that awful length where, when the wind gets hold of it, it makes this Dutch-Girl-Paint-girl-hat curl over my ears and nothing I do can make it not stick out in that stupid Bozo-the-Clown curl. The wind is very damp, and has salt in it, and that combines with the hairspray (if I didn't glue my hair down, it would hang straight down in my face and make me CRAZY) and makes the hair even more impossible. I really need a haircut. Bad. And can't seem to remember to call anywhere or squeeze out time to go to a walk-in place. I'm either going to have to get used to looking like Bozo every time I set foot out in this wild wind, or manage to get this mess cut off.

I went out to walk this a.m. Right At High Tide. Usually I'm an hour ahead of the tide turning, or an hour behind, or sometimes smack in the middle. But today, I was on the beach for the only turning of the tide today, as high tide hit and then started back out. Not that I really noticed the turn of it, but I certainly did notice that it was high, especially since this wild wind--enough to make cars rock--is blowing straight onshore and pushing the water in more. I had to go almost to 39th street to find stairs that led to sand rather than water, and even then the water was almost knee deep a time or two. And since the tide was so high, the water was over sand that spends most of its time out of the water. Only the very top layer was wet. Immediately underneath, the sand was soft and squooshy, so I was sinking into the sand rather than pounding along the hard surface you usually get with wet sand, because it wasn't wet enough. All that sinking in makes for quite a workout.

The wind is so strong, the birds were flying at an angle. I saw a few pelicans flying southwest, but pointed south (the direction the wind was coming from). Kind of like you have to drive your car in a strong wind, with the steering wheel pointed into the wind to keep the wind from shoving you off the road. The gulls were flying like crazy just to stand still. It's been this way for days.

I'm waxing so poetical (or maybe obsessively) because there's not much else to report. The fella and I did go out to see PRINCE CASPIAN last night, finally. The boy had to work, or we might have gone to see Indiana Jones. That's the one he wants to see. I forgot to take my sweater, but didn't get too cold. The folks behind us in line had obviously been to the local theater before, because one had a huge fleece robe, and another had a big jacket. Man, they keep that place cold.

The writing, it also sucketh. No real excuse for it, except that I keep finding excuses. People visiting. Errands needing running. Granddogs needing to be played with. Nieces and nephews graduating. The nephew's done. The niece is tomorrow. Have to/want to go. Get to leave early enough to go eat shishkebab at the sister's.

I think I've written a grand total of 5 pages this week. That's five more pages than I had last week, but they're all...transition. Getting from the morgue to the murder scene kind of stuff. Bleah. I mean, we have to get from one place to the other, but it shouldn't have to take 5 pages to do it. Of course, I'm disposing of an excess character (indisposition, not death) and switching POV in the process, but it doesn't feel like anything's happened. Suppose that's because it hasn't. And I'm still not sure where the villain will show up and cause trouble. I'd really like a bit of a frothing-at-the-mouth scene. Especially since I have two potential frothers. Maybe I can use the alternate frother here... Hmm.

Anyway--there's the News Of The Week So Far. Enjoy, and watch out for that wind. :)

Sandcastles and such

We had houseguests this weekend. The in-laws finally made it down to the island and we had a great time. I keep telling people we love having people come and visit and we want all the brothers and sisters and cousins and nieces and nephews to come--and nobody believes me. But we do. We don't have a lot of time available for them to come--but we do want them to do it.

Anyway, the fella's folks got in Thursday afternoon--the day the boy started his first shift at work. He's waiting tables at one of the nice restaurants on the seawall--it was that or construction work, and he was in favor of the place with air conditioning. He was still at home when they arrived, so it worked out well. Friday, I went in to work in the a.m. while the others got a tour of town and hit the fish market, so we had a shrimp boil for supper.

Our family--both sides--is all about shrimp. Even those store-bought, previously frozen limp-shrimp rings will be inhaled in ten minutes flat (depending on how many cousins are inhaling). And if one of the little cousins proclaims a dislike for shrimp, the standard answer is "Good! More for us." (One of my grandboys doesn't like shrimp. His little brother has loved them since he started eating real food. But then he's like "Mikey." He will eat anything he can chew. The daughter's boy has recently decided he will eat shrimps too. Alas, fewer for us. And time spent peeling them for the little guys that can't be spent peeling our own.)

But, much as we enjoy those grocery-store variety, they pale--absolutely fade away--in comparison to shrimp fresh off the boat, bought at the fish market the same morning they are boiled, chilled and eaten. It's been a while since we hit the market, and it reminded me that we need to do it more often. (Especially since the fella de-headed the shrimps that came with their heads on and I didn't have to do it. I hate getting stabbed by shrimp spines.) We don't need a special occasion. Just shrimp. Oh MY, those babies were yummy.

Mostly, that's what we did for the weekend. We ate. We also rode the ferry over to Bolivar Peninsula and back, and went out to look at the sandcastles. There's an annual sandcastle building contest sponsored by an architectural association with all sorts of categories, plus "Best of Show." The castle that won first place was a literal castle. With ARCHES.

I have no idea how they built those arches. I don't think they can use any building material other than sand and water, so the arches totally impressed me--and the judges too, obviously. (I'll get a picture from the fella as soon as I can.)

We also went to dine at the boy's workplace and I got to try the famous pecan pie. It was almost more a pecan cake, because the filling had flour in it, but it was yummy. I ate way too much, but I'm not sorry. Except that it will take several more power walks (if my walking had any power) to work it off. Sigh.

I got no writing done last Friday. None yesterday, and today I eked out a whole two pages. But it's better than nothing I guess. (sigh)

So what cool thing did y'all do over the weekend? Or what yummy thing did you get to eat? (I do talk about food a lot here, don't I? What does this tell you about me???)(I know.)

The Mommy Voice

I love what the daughter posted at her blog, and I just have to share it.

There are many women who claim that there are few forces as powerful on this earth as the mommy voice. This mythic force compels all persons within hearing range to cease all activity, revert to the mental age of 5, and say to themselves, "my god, I hope she doesn't mean me." It is an elusive and hard to describe power. Though God, in all his goodness, bestows this mighty gift on all women who claim young humans as their own.

However, since my child is beyond the scope of normal human children, God has deemed it necessary to provide me with a vocal power that completely transcends the mommy voice. You might call it an obey me or die voice. It is a voice that would put drill sergeants to shame. It is the faintest shadow of the voice that God used to call creation into being. It is even enough to make C stop running away and turn around.

It is a gift I am very grateful to have.

I know all about that voice. Moms generally only bring it out for the "I really mean what I am telling you and you had better pay attention NOW" occasions, because I remember far too many occasions when they would look up and then just go right back to what they were doing.

I did get tickled not too long ago... We had the youngest son in the car--the one who is still in college and has no kids--and the older son's two boys also in the car taking them for a visit to Gigi and Granddaddy's. They were goofing around in the back-back seat (it's an SUV with 3 rows of seats), getting out of their seatbelts and generally misbehaving when "Uncle Bob" turned around in the middle-back seat, pointed at them and roared "Sit your butt DOWN in that seat NOW and put your seatbelt ON your body."

"Uncle Bob" looks and sounds much like their daddy, so we had instant quiet and scrambling for seatbelts. Meanwhile, our son turned around to look at us with this horrified look on his face and said-- "Oh my God--I'm channeling Dad."

So, yeah. Not only does God give us a mommy/daddy voice--it's inherited.

Summer Crazy Season

Yes, it has started. The Summer Crazy Season. It begins with graduations, so for us, it started this past Saturday when we went to watch one of the nephews graduate. That meant a trip to Fort Worth, then sitting outdoors (fortunately, the ceremony was in the morning before it got Really Hot and under a tent, so there was less threat of sunburn) for a couple of hours, then off to a family party and much eating of barbecue and shrimps and cake. This is not particularly crazy, but it did involve driving long distances and sitting outside in the heat (they had little cardboard fans on sticks with a photo of the graduating class to stir the air) and lots of very loud children. We have pictures of the grandboys to post--but I don't think they're uploaded yet.

But no, the craziness does not end there, because the very next day, we had to go load up the boy--who is not so boyish any more--and move his stuff to storage, then move the rest of his stuff, and the granddog, home for the summer. This meant lots of climbing up and down stairs and vacuuming and re-packing of overstuffed boxes. (He didn't inherit the packing gene which his father and sister have...That's my boy...) And then driving again.

We had a party/potluck barbecue Monday night I made a bushel of potato salad for. (Other families don't eat potato salad like mine does. Five pounds of potatoes is only the beginning--and if the other folks at the pot luck don't eat much, all the better. They can have it for breakfast.) (Yes. Breakfast.) Also made the flour-free peanutbutter cookies, AKA the easiest cookies ever.

Much of the rest of the time has been spent trying to get the boy's internet up and running. I have internet. We're just trying to branch it off the main modem for him. The router we used in the Panhandle is refusing to work. You can only buy wireless routers now--though the one we got does have wire hookups for four computers, plus the wireless thing. But it's extremely slow when it does work. So I think he's taking it back and picking up another one. (Things are beginning to feel expensive.)

I did use the trip to the mainland to pick up the router as an excuse to stop off at the mall Waldenbooks and snabble up a copy of Blood Noir. I read it too. I'll wait a day or two before I go through it again and make sure I caught everything. I also bought a bunch of new romances because, hey--Waldenbooks has a "buy 4 get 5th free" thing, and I'd already picked up 3 of them. So I got 5 in all. The new Quinn, the new Layton, the new Chase, an Elizabeth Bevarly and ... one other I can't remember right now.

Let's see--this coming weekend, we have company coming. Tomorrow. The next weekend, a niece is graduating and we're going up for that. Then there's stuff during the week. Oh, and it's time to get ready for hurricane season on top of everything else. We live on a Gulf coast barrier island, so this is not something to ignore. So we have to put together a couple of hurricane kits--one for evacuation and one for riding it out in place (for the Category 1-2 size hurricanes).

Then I think we're here for a weekend, and then it starts again. Ack!

All of this makes it very hard to get much writing done. I'm creeping along this week at about 3 pages a day--on the days I get there. Friday will be hopeless this week. I just have to keep plugging.

Beach reads and Bookstores

The daughter was being snide and sarcastic in the comments below, saying "Like you need an excuse to hang out at a bookstore." But I DO! I need excuses.

Thing is, excuses are extremely easy for me to come by. For instance, "I NEED New books" is a valid excuse. Or "The new Slither Grimblethorpe book is coming out, and I NEED it!" That's a valid excuse too. (Not that Slither Grimblethorpe is a real author. I just made that up for an example.)

Of course, there is always the "I'm going to be in the area anyway, so..." excuse. That's the one that gets me off the island to the Big Bookstores where they actually have more of the books I want. The Hastings bookstore is closing down. It's still in the process, which means it still has a lot of old books nobody wants to buy, and it's not shelving any of the new books being released. Then there's the independent store downtown, which leans Heavily toward lit'rachure and very little commercial, mass-market fiction. Or even commercial, mass-market hardbacks. There's a used books place semi-downtown. And then there's Wal-Mart and Target. See, it's not the "hanging out in the bookstore" excuse I need.

It's the Driving 30 miles to the Bookstore to get the Books I Want NOW excuse I really need. Because the new L.K. Hamilton book comes out next week. (I know bazillions of you hate what LKH has done with Anita Blake. I don't care. I need the book. I will read the book. Probably three times before I put it down. Maybe only twice. Deal with it.)

Also, the new Julia Quinn novel comes out next week. And I think there's also an Edith Layton. And maybe the new Jack Campbell Lost Fleet book. The Quinn and the Layton might be available at Target. But they might not be. I doubt the LKH book will be there--though it might. And I KNOW the Campbell book won't be stocked. And there may be others I want and crave and NEED like Whoa and Darn. (I know. But I'm old. I can't curse with impunity.) (Unless it's necessary for a character in a book. Or I've worked my way up from Dagnabbit, because I'm really mad...)

Yes, I know I can order them from Amazon, or Borders or Books-a-Million online. But see, then I would have to WAIT. I am not good at waiting. I used to order the LKH books from the science fiction book club. But they would take a week to 10 days to arrive. Meanwhile, I'd go to the bookstore and sit and read chapter after chapter in the not-so-comfy chairs. I would make myself crazy with the waiting and the wanting. So I don't order any more. I'm just going to have to come up with a reason to drive into town. Or something. So there it is. Excuses and addictions and books I want to read this summer.

While I live at the beach (sort of--it's about 2 blocks away), I don't read there. I sunburn in about 10 minutes flat. Or in an hour or so, if I have good sunscreen. And anyway, if I'm actually on the beach, I'd rather be in the water (which is not good for books) or walking (which usually winds up being in the water, this time of year). And if I'm walking, I need to watch where I'm going, what with the sharp shells and baby jellyfish and stuff on the beach, since I walk barefoot...

If I'm going to be reading, I'll sit on the glider under the big magnolia in the back yard, or at the table under the covered porch, in the shade. :)

What books do you want to read this summer? Where is your favorite summer reading place?

The Tuesday Blog

It's Tuesday and I'm blogging again. I seem to post a lot of blogs on Tuesday. Mostly because Monday tends to be really crazy and I never manage to make it by here but I Really want to post at least one blog a week so y'all won't think I've forgotten you, and Tuesday seems to be when I can make myself get over here and do it.

The problem is that many times, by the time Tuesday gets here, I can't think of anything to blog about. I've forgotten whatever it was I did over the weekend. Maybe because the weekend seems so far behind me. Anyway, it's Tuesday again, and I'm blogging.

About what? Um--we went to see Iron Man a week ago Sunday, and out to dinner for Mother's Day. This past weekend, I overdid it a little on the flower beds and pretty much slept the rest of the weekend--though we did buy some "previously viewed" movies and watched American Gangster Sunday night. I want to go see Prince Caspian, but haven't found the time yet, and since we're moving into Graduation Season, I'm not sure when we will. Maybe we can go on a Wednesday, or something.

I did walk on the beach yesterday morning. Still haven't looked up those silly plover birds, because I can't find where I put my bird book. I think it's in my office, but where??? No special observations yesterday--seagulls, shells, sand, water--the beach is always great, and before 8 a.m. on Monday, I pretty much have it to myself.

The writing is moving ahead. Only 3 pages yesterday, but I got 6 today, and now I need to think about my book's theology before I can forge ahead. Since this book is about spirits, and demons have cropped up already, and ghosts and "ascending"--I have to think about that sort of thing. I know how it works--I just have to figure out how to explain it, and decide how much explaining I want to do at this point.

A fantasy novel requires a lot of explaining, and I've set it up so that the explaining makes sense--one of my characters doesn't know much about the magic and has to be told. But I do sometimes feel as if the story's getting bogged down in all the explanations. Today, though, it went well. I didn't expect this particular scene at this point, but it works well, does what I need it to go and sets up one of the major complications that will come into play later. So yeah. I'm feeling good about the writing.

RWA chapter meeting today. I'm totally not interested in this program, but I'm going anyway, because hanging out with other writers and talking writing gets my writerly juices flowing, and I need as much flow as I can get. I also get to hang out at the book store. Yay!

My first Art Contest

Okay, here's the painting that made the cut, that will be in the show. In this light, you can see some of the brush strokes that don't show in artificial light (I took it outside to photograph), but this is the painting. (Didn't win a prize, but it's in the show! Not bad for my first try ever.)

You can't see the one that didn't make it, because I haven't taken its picture yet. Sorry. It's a painting of three little boys playing at the beach. With sucky hands and feet. I could stick it on an easel and try to fix the hands and feet, and the arm that's ... just wrong. But I don't think I will. It will just have to be wrong. (sigh) I still like it anyway.

Um. I've signed the contract, so it's official. I have definitely sold three books to Tor. There. That's my news of the day.

Thursday Thirteen

I stumbled across this recently and thought I'd participate, even though I don't quite know what it is. I'm guessing 13 random things I want to put on my website. So here's mine:

The last 13 new books I read (I am not counting re-reads or the book I just skimmed)
They are, in the order in which they are stacked up on my desk:
1. THE SPYMASTER'S LADY by Joanna Bourne (Excellent!)
2. A DANGEROUS LOVE by Brenda Joyce (Good)
3. YOU'VE GOT MALE by Elizabeth Bevarly (fun)
4. PERSONAL DEMON by Kelley Armstrong (Good)
5. HEROES ADRIFT by Moira Moore (Good)
6. MYSTIC HORSEMAN by Kathleen Eagle (Good)
7. THE TYCOON'S ONE NIGHT REVENGE by Bronwyn Jameson (Also good)
8. THE DUKE NEXT DOOR by Celeste Bradley (fun and good)
9. PRIVATE ARRANGEMENTS by Sherry Thomas (pretty good)
10. THE STOLEN PRINCESS by Anne Gracie (Don't remember, but I usually like Gracie)
11. FORGOTTEN MARRIAGE by Paula Roe (forgot this one too, but ...)
12. VOWS OF A VENGEFUL GROOM by Bronwyn Jameson (another Australian goodie)
13. SIMPLY PERFECT by Mary Balogh (Excellent)

Some of the others may deserve excellents, but I'll have to look at them again. Enjoyed reading all of them--I skipped a fair portion of the Thomas book, but that's because of all the flashbacks. Not because they were flashbacks, per se, but because it was looking back at previous misery. Or maybe because it was looking back at previous happiness which I knew became misery.

I skimmed most of THE VANISHING VISCOUNTESS by Diane Gaston, and I really can't pinpoint why--it just didn't grab me like the Balogh and Bourne books did. I've liked the other Gaston's I've read, but this one--maybe because it was a traveling story. Don't know. And my re-read was KINSMAN'S OATH by Susan Krinard. I even bought a new secondhand copy to re-read it...

Now to get these all up on Shelfari and GoodReads, and in my computer log, and on the Romance Readers Anonymous loop...

Pelicans, and other thoughts

The thing about living at the beach is that you have to LIVE at the beach. All that regular, everyday stuff still has to be done, even though the beach is only two blocks away. Cooking, laundry, scrubbing bathrooms, going to work--all that stuff takes up going-to-the-beach time. So you just have to go anyway, and still, somehow get everything done.

I was thinking about this as I walked on the beach today. Tide was in-ish. (Didn't look for the times in the paper this a.m.) I could walk around the boulders, but the waves still came up--just not too high. I was thinking about how I still had to go home and do stuff, but wasn't it great that I could spend this little amount of time out communing with nature.

The sargasso seaweed is starting to come in. In places it looks like a crinkly, crocheted blanket, it's so thick. I'm not sure if the birds eat something on the seaweed, or if they eat the stuff that's tangled up in/hiding in the seaweed, but the birds--seagulls and sanderlings and plovers and willets--seem to hang out near it and hung through it.

Today, I found the biggest shell yet. Most shells that wash up on our Gulf coast are small. Mostly they're scallop-type shells in white or black or yellow-stripes, an inch, or maybe two across. The vast majority are much smaller, some smaller than my tiniest toenail. But this one is at least 4 inches across. Maybe 5. Bigger than the palm of my hand, and deep, and almost black. Part of the rim was broken off, but it's pretty much whole. I also found what I think is a piece of coral. I think it might be brain coral, from my minimal research. No picture of it yet...

I only saw one pelican flying today. Monday, row after row flapped by overhead. Usually I see at least one line of pelicans heading east--maybe it was a wind thing. Yesterday and Monday were very windy, today was less so. Anyway, Monday, I decided to count the numbers of pelicans flying in their lines.

When I was growing up not far from my beach, and would come down to swim and ride the ferry and such--I never saw a single brown pelican, much less a white one. They were quite endangered. One reason I decided to count how many I saw on Monday. I think I've also mentioned here that pelicans like to fly single file. I assume this cuts down on the headwind issue, like the wild goose V, but I've never seen pelicans fly in an actual V, just single file.

Anyway, I counted two lines of eleven pelicans each. Then one of thirteen. Then one of seventeen pelicans. That's a lot of pelicans. I was beginning to think that pelicans had a thing for odd numbers--but then I saw two separate lines, flying somewhat close together, of eight pelicans each. One had seven at first, but there was a singleton flying really hard to catch up and fall in at the end of the line. Now I shall do math.

I had to get out a pen and write on the bottom of a cutline page. I saw in one thirty-minute walk sixty-eight (68) brown pelicans. (If I added wrong, please correct my arithmetic in the comments. thank you.) That's a LOT of pelicans. They were all flying the same direction, so I'm reasonably certain it was 68 different pelicans, not the same ones flying in circles. Which to me is absolutely totally cool, since it was my own childhood when pelicans were so endangered you just did not see them on the island. At all. Oh, and I didn't count the single pelican I saw flying in to land beside one of the jetties. So that makes 69.

The beach belongs to the birds from dawn to about 10 or 11 a.m. I may go out walking at 8-ish, but the beach is still theirs. They tolerate me grudgingly.

I got started writing a little late. The plumber guy came and fixed the toilet from its intermittent running (which can be shocking while in the shower, since it would run every five minutes and alternately scald/freeze you while it ran) and I took my sweet time cleaning up after the walk. But I still got 3.5 pages written. Did 6 yesterday. I'm not sure I'll keep what I wrote today--or that I'll keep it in this location, but it's written.

Oh. I just remembered. I entered my very first juried art show Saturday. The very first one where I took paintings in and let other people (who are neither relatives or friends) Look at them and decide whether they were worthy of hanging in a show. They were judged in the non-professional category, of course, which probably helped, but there are some very good non-pros. Anyway, one of the two paintings I entered made the cut. (I suck at painting/drawing hands and feet. And arms. Some arms, anyway.) I didn't win a prize, but I made the cut.

So my painting of Robert is going to be hung in this art show. (It's in the blog archive if the other link doesn't work. I can't figure out how to post it on the blog with this work Mac. Just scroll down till you see the painting of the person near the bottom...)(If you want to see it.)

I'll take a picture at the show, so you can see it hanging with other people looking at it. ;)

High Tide

First things first, here. I'm donating the prize to be given away at the 2 B Read blog this week. This is the blog of the published authors chapter of RWA, and I'm blogging over there on Thursday. (I'll remind you again on Thursday. ) If you comment at the blog, you will be eligible to win the contest. So go read the blog posts, and comment!

High tide was at 7:12 a.m. today. I went out to walk on the beach at 7:50 (approximately). So the sea was very, very close to the seawall when I climbed down the stairs. I drove past the seawall parks (wide areas with benches and picnic tables and big piles of pink granite boulders extending way out into the water) to a place where I could walk more than two jetties without having to walk waist-deep in the water to get around the big piles of rocks--and the water came right up to the bottom of the stairway. I stepped of the concrete step into water.

I tried at first to walk around the rocks--because the sand did not cover those right at the base of the seawall. But the water was just too deep. Up to my knees. And I couldn't see the sand, so I couldn't see the places where the water had washed it away. It wasn't safe walking there. But I could carefully work my way up right next to the seawall and walk through the maze of rocks pushing up through the sand. High tide was really high...

But after I got through the rocks and to a section of beach where the waves didn't wash quite so close to the wall, I was able to notice all the giant rows of giant pelicans flying down the island, ten and twelve in line one behind the other, and the sanderlings and another type of sandpiper-like bird picking at the seaweed. I thought the other birds were kildeer, but I just looked up images of kildeer, and what I saw was different, so I'm going to have to go home and hit the bird book to figure out what they are. I think the birds were probably selecting little bits of the crinkly seaweed to use for nest building, but I'm not sure.

Had a busy weekend. I had hoped to stay home, but ended up not getting to. Wound up having three softball games to watch on Saturday, since the college team -- well, they lost their very first game, but won the second Friday game, which meant they got/had to play Saturday morning at 11:30. They won that one, which meant they had/got to play at 2:00. Then they won that one, which meant they had to play again at 4:30... We didn't stay for the third game. By that time, the team was so exhausted, they didn't win again. But they had a good run in the regional championship tournament. I enjoyed watching the two games we did watch.

And somehow, even though I stayed under the awnings and shade all morning and afternoon, I somehow managed to get enough sun to burn. My face and neck turned bright red, enough to show through the makeup, which at least toned it down a little. I wasn't in the sun! Okay, maybe 10 or 15 minutes, because it was cool enough that the sharp wind made it downright cold. And I burned in that 10 or 15 minutes. Good grief. Okay, so no more going anywhere without sunscreen. Especially at midday.

I've been able to get back into the writing this week. Except I had to get into my file cabinet to dig out some research. (I am pretty sure I have some more somewhere, but couldn't find it yesterday.) Which meant I had to get down on the floor to look through that bottom file cabinet drawer. Which meant I had to get back up. Which is a huge production, given the state of my knees and the rest of myself. And since the file cabinet is behind my desk, creating the walkway between desk and closet, I brushed against the lampshade of the lamp on the desk and sent it slowly crashing over to dangle from its electrical cord in front of the desk chair. The lamp knocked over the Coke Zero I'd been drinking, which dampened the page I'd been writing on, which fluttered to the floor. The Coke dribbled across the desk and onto the floor... Big mess.

So today, I re-copied the page that got all wet, because the ink ran on it, and I revised it, and I went on with the scene...and then I couldn't decide where to go next.

I kind of think I need to summarize a bunch of stuff here and move back to the main mystery, but I keep getting bogged down in logistics. My heroine has no girl clothes. She needs girl clothes before she can really do many of the things she needs to do. She's rooming with the girl wizard. Do I need a scene to set up how that's working? How would that contribute to the furthering of the story? Maybe if later the heroine stops showing up at the rooms...? Bleah. Hopefully I can figure all this out by the time I need to start working in the morning.

And I need to come up with a profound--or at least profound-ish--topic for a blog on Thursday, at 2 B Read. I want lots of comments, so I can give away a book. To YOU, perchance--

Street Dunes

Beach Report: Since I did go out and ride this morning--squeezed the bicycle out between all the boxes and old dressers and stuff in the garage--I thought I'd begin here, because there was quite a wind last night.

This is not unusual. The wind blows a lot on our little island, and not always from the sea. In the winter, it comes from the north, which is landward. More northwest-ish, but still, north. Last night, this fierce wind came out of the south. And it blew the sand up over the seawall.

I had to ride through a little drift of sand to get up on the sidewalk by the Rainforest Cafe, and there was sand dusted all over their grass and flowers. The petunias in the streetside bed were more tan than pink, from all the sand on them.

On the beach, a pair of bulldozers were pushing the sand, which had been piled up to a foot below the top of the seawall (when it's usually 5 to 6 feet below), back into the water. And later, when I was driving back from the Radio Shack (Radio Shack has a waterfront store!) from picking up a new cable for my portable hard drive, the whole right-turn lane at our turn, by the Rainforest, was covered over with sand. And the big plastic garbage cans down on the beach (they're plastic because metal rusts overnight) had not only been turned over, but one of them had been turned completely upside down. That's some fierce wind.

So. That's the report from the water front. I didn't ride very far at all on my bicycle, because I hadn't ridden in over a week, and had become all feeble again, and because the wind was still pretty stiff. I'm going to have to keep up the bike riding, as well as get back out to walk in the warm water. My knees will thank me.

Oh, and the website is under construction. Not under redesign. It's still going to have the same self-made design as before because I do not have time to fool around with programs I barely know how to use. What I have done is switch my web server account to a different plan, which will ultimately be easier for me to use, but in the meantime requires me to re-upload everything, including the fiddly little bits like the roll-over sidebar buttons and such. Yes, I have an old-fashioned website. Because I did it myself and I don't have time to learn how to do the dropdown menu linky things... does it work? I think so, but then I'm the one who put it together. Maybe when I get paid for this new contract, I'll pay somebody else to design one for me...

The writing feels stalled out. Probably because it is. I spent last week revising and re-writing a whole big chunk of the story, and this week, I went back to New Blood and hunted up all the places where I'd explained the function of magic and marked them with those cute little flag Post-Its, because I got a set of them in the gift basket from the RWA chapter where I spoke a couple of weeks ago. So now I can go look up what I said about what in the previous book. I do wish that I hadn't said wizards could have animal familiars, but I did, and I don't think I can change that much of the story now. I didn't give out many of them, so maybe I can set it up that it's difficult to acquire a familiar... Conjurers have spirit familiars, sorcerers have human familiars, alchemists don't have familiars at all, and wizards have animal familiars, but it's tough to acquire one.

After all the marking of the magic, I typed in all the revised chunks so it would all be in the computer and I wouldn't have to do the jumping from insert to original and back again when it was cold. I wanted everything smooth and flowing and at least semi-organized before I went on. So now I have to start writing brand new, original stuff on Monday. I should have been doing it this past week, but I didn't, and I think it's good that I did what I did, but... I'm feeling very behind again. Ah well. I am up to page 92. That's not bad, actually... Okay, I don't feel so bad, now.

And I won't be able to do what I thought I could do this weekend. We've got to hit the road again, but it might not be as bad/busy as I thought. The college softball team is in the regional playoffs, and it all depends on how many games they win and/or lose as to whether we have to go to a game on Saturday or not. If there's a Saturday game, we'll leave straight from the ball game. If there isn't...I'm not sure when we'll leave town. But it ties up my weekend with a bunch of stuff I hadn't planned to do (like upload all the image files to the new web server). Oh well. You gotta do what you gotta do...

Thirty Two Years

That's how long the fella and I have been married. I have trouble remembering the exact number from time to time, actually--that's what age does to one, after all--and then I have to Do Math to calculate it. But that's the number. 32.

We delayed celebrating on our actual anniversary, Thursday, and went to church band practice instead. New songs every week can be a lot to learn. Friday, there was a faculty awards banquet the fella had to go to, and of course, I dressed up and went along. Stayed after and had a giant margarita while chatting with various faculty and spouses. And then, Saturday, we made reservations at one of the best restaurants on the island. I'd been wanting to go there for a while, so at last, we did. They do seafood with a Central American flair...and yes, you know I'm going to share our menu with you.

I like calamari, at least the fried appetizer kind. I even like the ones that have all their little tentacles. I have never had calamari flavored like this, though. It was delicious, fried up like those other sorts, but dressed with sweet banana peppers and caramelized onions and red bell peppers...pretty sure they were cooked in olive oil, and then all mixed up together in a sweet/hot/crunchy/calamari-tasting deliciousness. Oh, and they also serve--like you get tostadas with salsa at a good Mexican restaurant--this place serves plaintain chips with salsa and a green sauce--I think they called it chimichurri. The salsa was milder, with other flavors than in a Mexican salsa casera. Anyway, very good.

We had what one of the other waiters described as a signature dish of the restaurant. Red snapper with a plaintain crust served with raspberry chipotle sauce and Parmesan scalloped potatoes. The plaintains weren't sweet and only faintly banana-y. Nice and crunchy, and wonderful with the sweet-hot of the sauce. Not very hot, just ... right. And then we succumbed to dessert. I had a pecan ball, which is a giant scoop of ice cream coated in pecans (I thought it would be a little smaller) drizzled with butterscotch. They didn't...quite...have to bring out the wheelbarrow to roll us out of the restaurant. It is really a treat to live where there are so many wonderful places to eat. We still haven't made our way through all of them...

And then we went home to watch Charlie Wilson's War, and enjoyed lying around like overfed slugs to watch it. And that was our anniversary celebration.

Oh. And okay, let's just confess my native dorkiness here. I dropped, dribbled and/or dripped every single course on myself, beginning with a banana pepper slice, continuing through a piece of Caesar salad dressing-coated Romaine, to a droplet of chipotle sauce and ending with a major dribble of ice cream and butterscotch, right down the front of my red blouse. Sigh. Can't say I didn't enjoy my food...and I really tried hard not to wear it too...but, well, somehow these things always seem to happen to me. It has become a family joke. Years and years ago. Sigh.

Beach Report: I am now a seagull voyeur. I caught a pair of seagulls Doing It, and did not look away and give them privacy. I figured if they were going to Do It right there on the public beach with a dozen other seagulls watching, they probably got off on exhibitionism.

The male was standing on top of the female, who looked rather long-suffering, squawking like a little boy doing sound-effects for a slow machine gun, sort of an ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah. In seagull voice, of course. And in perfect rhythm, every dozen ah-ahs or so, the female would give off a little high-pitched squeal while he wriggled his butt against hers. The squeal was the only thing that convinced me she wasn't totally bored by the whole affaire.

Now I have to wonder where the seagulls nest. Probably over in the marshes on the bay side of the island. It's sure not safe to build a nest on the beach with all the beachgoers exploring.

And now I must add seagull porn to my oeuvre. Ah well. This, I think adds either to my geekiness or my nerdyness quotient. Nerdyness, I think. Geeks tend to be monomaniacs. Nerds want to know everything about everything, and since birds are not my only fascination... Yep. I'm a nerd.

Beach Reports begin again

Not that they'll be any better than sporadic until I get my time organized a little better. But I did get out to walk on the beach yesterday. It was in the evening, so quite a few people were out still enjoying the day. I found my new shorts I bought for my friend's visit that I didn't get to wear because a cold front blew in and we had to wear jackets to walk on the beach. I found my flip-flops. And I drove to the beach and Walked.

The water is WARM! YAY!!! At last. It's not bathwater warm like it will be in September, but it's warm enough for a pleasant swim, if the sun's out and the wind's not blowing too hard. I admit it. I'm a wimp when it comes to swimming water temperature. It comes from living in Texas so many years. If it's not at LEAST 90 degrees (32+ C) air temp, I'm not going in, and 95 F (35C) is better. Either that, or the water had better be warm. I've been swimming in hot springs pools when the air was "brisk" and that was acceptable. But I don't like to be cold when I'm wet. So, now that the water's reaching the 70 F (21 C) range, and the air's pretty consistently close to 80 F (26.6 C), I ought to be able to go out one day soon and enjoy a little wave action in the water.

The thing I like best about the Gulf coast surf is that there isn't much of it. We just don't get the big surfing waves that they get on the Pacific coast. Have I said this before here? I just really like the fact that the surf doesn't beat you to death, and that it's easy to go out past the surf, where the water is still just chest deep, and let the non-breaking waves just rock you. It's infinitely relaxing to touch sand between the waves, then ride gently over them as they come rolling in to break (not too violently) twenty or so yards farther in toward shore. Soon. Maybe this weekend. (Though I have plans--Saltgrass Potters spring art show and sale, and maybe the garden club plant sale over in Bayou Vista.) (And getting the car washed. I did get the license plate and its holder put back on my car. Had a bit of a close encounter with a large trailer hitch in the parking lot at Fish Tales... But the beast (aka, my vehicle) is still filthy.)

About the beach--okay, the water was warm. Swimmers were out. Not much seaweed, and it was mostly the little crinkly stuff. No jellyfish yesterday. Lots of shells, and I even found half a sand dollar. First hint of a sand dollar I've seen in the 7 or 8 months I've been here. So I took it.

Today is our 32nd anniversary, and the fella was, as usual, up to par. I received a lovely arrangement of yellow roses (he knows I like other colors better than red) and some very interesting purple bud-like flower before I had to leave for the paper. (Where I am currently sloughing off by writing this blog post.) I think we're going to celebrate Saturday with dinner out, and Charlie Wilson's War at home. We meant to go see it in the theater, and never did make it, and I don't think there's anything out now that we really want to go see. I will try and remember to report back in... TRY.

Think I'm through the "going back to fix" pages in the writing, and can start forging ahead with new stuff. If only I can remember where I thought I was going from here... Hmmm. Well, I can write it, and then if I have to, fix it.

I Haz Furnishings

I mentioned, in my only blog last week (because I was really, really tired) that I traveled up to the Panhandle to supervising the packing and loading of the vast majority of our furniture so we could bring it to the Island where we now live. It is a VERY long way from the Texas coast to the panhandle and back again. Took a long time to drive it.

But we did--took out most of a week with no writing or even thinking about the book--and now all our stuff is Here, and I have to figure out where to put it. ACK!

The spouse is laying claim to the boy's book space, so now I have nowhere to put the boy's books.

There is Stuff all along one side of the kitchen counter, but we do have all the boxes out of the kitchen now. They are all in the den. Where we do a lot of our living.

I told the packers NOT to pack ANYTHING on the bed we weren't moving--and I carefully put my new teddy bear (because the stuffed whale I had been sleeping with had lost all the felt on his mouth in the past five years of life with me) in the middle of the bed so he wouldn't get packed...

And they carefully packed not only Marvin the Bear, but the one red throw pillow I'd deliberately put in the middle of all the gold matchy-matchy "set" pillows to make it not quite so matchy-matchy. I still have not found Marvin. But I did find Balou the bear (yes, the one from Disney's Jungle Book) so all is not lost. I have a bear to sleep with. (Some people hug pillows. I find bears (or killer whales) much more amenable for sleeping.)

So now, we have a little furniture left in the house we still own (I do miss that house...) to camp out in when we go up that way, instead of camping out here where we spend most of our time. The fella is Very Happy to have his recliner back.

I have re-discovered that I really cannot do Anything before I start writing in the morning. I tried to empty a box yesterday, and discovered books. They were books I'd had on my keeper shelf--and I couldn't remember if I still wanted to keep them. So I opened one of them to skim, and wound up spending the rest of the morning reading them. My mother says I just have no will power. And yes, this is true. Hence, the need to start writing first, before doing other stuff that will suck me into the Not Writing.

I can't read e-mails either. Or look stuff up on the internet. Nor should I hunt for stuff in research books, though I'm a little better about stopping that and getting back into the writing. I can, however, clean the kitchen, or bathrooms, or do laundry, or any of a hundred other household tasks, because Those Things aren't Fun. (Had to pick up a dead roach this a.m. Ick.) I sorta have to make myself to those things before writing, because they are SO not fun. I have to research house cleaning services on the island...

That said, I have had to go back and do a LOT of tweaking, because I wrote stuff before I figured out how the process worked of transferring a murder investigation from the Ordinary Police to the Magic Police, and because I realized my hero would rather do pretty much anything--except let a murderer get away--before asking his father for assistance. So I had to go back and make everything make sense.

I know there are many, many people who claim that one should Just Write the first draft, and go back and fix things After the whole draft is finished. And to a certain extent, I do that.

"But--But---" you are saying, "But you just Said you had to go back and tweak. That's not writing straight through."

No, it isn't. Because 1. I am NOT a multiple draft writer. I Hate writing the same stuff again and again and again. By the time I write stuff out in longhand, and then put it in the computer, it's pretty clean. Rarely do I add things--like emotion or description--when I type story in. Mostly, I cut stuff out. That's not the same as "layering" in things on subsequent drafts. And 2. I'm a linear writer. Not a plotter, not a pantser. I have to write from beginning to end, and I build on what I've written before. So if my hero's not motivated correctly--if he tells the heroine to do the right thing for the wrong reason, then I really can't keep going. Or if I have things out of order, I can't keep going.

That was part of my problem this time. I had to move some things later, and bring some things earlier, and if I don't do it NOW, when I know how things have to work, I'm not going to remember what I intended/needed to do when I come back to it later, no matter how many notes I write to myself. It's just too big a problem to save till later.

I realized a while ago that I'm having problems because I'm still figuring out how the magic works. I'm also having to figure out how magic fits into Victorian society...and it keeps slowing me up. The story is working, but it's just coming slow because I keep having to figure stuff out. But it IS coming. (cracking whip.)