Category: Smashed Potatoes

Whew!

Almost done with Lamp Light’s final before final edit!  I just sent this off to Jana.  I can’t wait to see what she comes up with for this cover!  (Yes, I know I always say this.)

This one, though… This is one very near to my heart.  Lamp Light is the book that nearly broke me.  The one I nearly gave up writing over.  The one that I nearly gave into my ex about.  About who I was, what my identity was, what I wanted out of life, where my strength was, what my dreams were, going forward.

I started this book/series 16 years ago.  Way back in 2002.

The Novo: Ridge Lake series was partially born out of my frustration with the Haven Point series.

Last year, I went to Jana and asked her for a single drawing.  A graphic of one of the main characters- a rottweiler named Moe.  (This won’t be the cover for Lamp Light.)  I swear, without even reading the book, as I have, just now, sent it to her, for her first glance, Jana took my description and pulled the image right out of my head.  Enough to change several small details about Lamp Light, Jaimie, and the entire series.  She brought my creation to life, and, as usual with her grace, talent, and compassion, has given me a gift to keep going.  Moe’s picture sits near my desk, or hangs on a wall, or comes with me to events.

I can’t wait to see what Jana comes up with next.  And for you all to meet a whole new cast of characters:  Jaimie, Drew, Lt. Silva, Moe, Bing-Bing, Pamela, Jesse, Brooke, Brodie, Pearson, Lavinia, Norris, and so many, many more.

This morning, I woke up from such a realistic dream, I actually grabbed the sheets and asked “What?”   Outloud.

Of course, this was an invitation to the cats to come sit on me, my face, my pillow, and I was assaulted by more than one cold nose.

It was a very pleasant dream.  Someone came to me, asking for help with something he needed to do.  Okay, that part wasn’t pleasant because it was for his dying father.  It wasn’t a drama thing.  He just wanted to get his father out of the house and take the man to watch a movie somewhere, where his dad could still be safe and healthy, but not have it be like a hospital or his sick room in their house.  But my friend couldn’t think of a place.  That was where I came in.  Totally cool and something I would do in actual life.

There wasn’t any huge festival or grandiose gesture of thanks.  A simple thank you and a comment.  In this dream, I sat with four people, watching this movie.  A real, actual movie, playing on a tv set, with a couch and a recliner, in a blue room with plants.  And yes, I watched the movie.  In the dream.

After I woke up, with cold noses, I was adjusting to reality.  What I can think is… “what a lovely way to say goodbye.”  The friend from the dream is a real person.  We haven’t spoken in a while.  You know how life gets in the way and you can never quite get that back.  But this dream was so real, it was as though what needed to be completed was.  No fighting.  No “you said this, you stupid moron.”  No tears.  Simply a pleasant dream, spending time together.

One of those moments where you almost wish it would continue forever and you know it won’t.  Trying to make it last would ruin the gift and the beauty.

Since adjusting to reality, because, just because I’m awake does not necessarily mean I am coherent for more than immediate need, mostly, I’ve felt peace.  I’ve decided to stay in that sleepy wonderment for the remainder of the day.  Not forcing the dream back into my mind.  Not shoving it to the back burner.

I completely lost my shit last week.  I’m fed up with a lot of things.  Jana, bless her, listened to me kavetch for a while and gave me some very simple advice.  Advice I’ve given to others that I needed someone who wasn’t causing me adjeda to say to me.  So this day of peace is well worth investing in.

I said to her:  “I don’t know how to dream anymore.  The one that I’ve managed to hold on to [getting my books out], you’ve helped me with and still are helping me with.”

Exploring my curiosity is one thing.  Dreaming and making plans on those dreams is quite another.

Her response was this, not exact… “Stop investing in people who don’t give any energy back.  Pull back and stick your hands in the garden, because those plants and flowers will respond to anything you give them.  Work on those plans when you get hurt.  Keep working on them instead of investing in pain and depleting yourself.”

Yes.  The very reason I started this blog.  What I have been saying for a long time.  It’s time to stop.

I can’t begin to put to words what it feels like to see someone who has had the same type of problem repeat the words in my head, that I have said to others- both to encourage them to heal or to encourage them to stop hurting me.

The closest I can come is peace.  Acknowledgement.  Click.

And if I hadn’t had that, I think my peaceful “goodbye” dream wouldn’t have happened.

So even though it’s raining today and I can’t get the roto-tiller into the front yard, I am looking at the gorgeous mandevilla I bought, listening to the birds, seeing gold finch and cardinals and sparrows and robins and grackles flit around.  Several trees on my street have been blooming with all sorts of pretty shades of petals.  And I have a murderer to thread through Lamp Light a little more succinctly.

I think in between that, feeling the peace of a good goodbye, laundry, and chasing the cats around, I’m going to get out my bow.  Shoot a few rounds into the target.  Sweep the floor, make dinner, and then climb into bed and see what another night of sleep will bring me.

Have you ever watched a squirrel?  I mean really watched one?

Yes, watch out.  The geek flag is about to fly.

I was very much into environmental science as a young person.   So much that, when, and I don’t know about your high school but mine was like a mini-college, it was time to choose which classes I wanted to take after biology, 2 full semesters of Enviro were at the top of my list.  Of course, the practical side of my mother also said being on crutches for six weeks in a chem lab wasn’t the safest thing in the world had a part to play, since I had reconstructive surgery scheduled…

I told her that I loved to blow things up anyway, so that didn’t really affect my decision.  Middle school chem, we learned how to make flour bombs…  I digress.  Because I was on squirrels.

Did you know (please don’t yawn) that there is a difference between city squirrels and country squirrels?  Size, habit, brain capacity.  Geek that I am, underneath, I did a study on the differences for my class.  I spent one week at home in the burbs, camera in hand, one week in downtown Syracuse.  Then I spent spring break, in the icy mud, out at a nature preserve.  Every day.  Dawn to dusk.

I wanted field experience.  More formalized than my personal choices.  Something I could put on a college application.  I wanted to be a park ranger, and my fiance at the time was also hugely into nature.  He was a caretaker at a camp.

See this tattoo?  This is his.  Adrian died in a car accident shortly after he proposed.  Proposed and jumped off the roof of a 20 foot building into a massive snowbank when I said yes.

I can’t tell you how much meeting Adrian changed me.  I was pretty wild as it was back then, but he brought out the light in me like very little has before or since.  And he was definitely a wild child himself.

I was so bored with high school.  I wanted to get my GED, go to prep college, and start my career.  Adrian convinced me not to, that it would hurt my family.  That he would wait and we had time.  We didn’t.

Shortly after the relationship was over, and someday, I might tell the whole story there, I started prepping for college.  I started getting together those applications.  The one I wanted, really wanted, never came.  I called again for another packet.  Never arrived.

After a year had passed and several phone calls to the college, I received notice that I wouldn’t be accepted because I had too many issues getting my paperwork in.

I found out, through family, that my grandmother, whose house we were living in at the time, had taken all the packets.  She felt it was too dangerous an occupation for me because she had heard that a park ranger needed the ability to jump unaided out of a 40 foot tree and I had had reconstructive surgery on both my legs.

I don’t know about you, but I don’t know anyone who could jump out of a tree like that and not break something.  But it was too late.  The one college I could have possible afforded and gotten the education I wanted was out of reach.

I overheard her one day, gossiping with a friend, the real reasons why she had done this.  She wanted me to be an interpreter and see the world, not once accepting that I loathe travel.  And she didn’t want me showing up her son, who is not that much older than me.  Nana not only took the packets but she also messed with my bank account where I had been saving up money to go.

My mother couldn’t have afforded college for both my sister and I.  She was already eating so little.

In one selfish decision, my fiance was killed by a drunk.  In another, my grandmother killed my dreams.

I was a mess.  I’m still a mess.

Those two actions have defined most of my adult life.  I put one foot in front of the other, working very hard, at jobs I could get and absolutely hated, to put money in the bank and food on the table.

Now I’m good at what I do.  I have some pretty extensive training to do what I do.  But it is not my passion and, some days, I have to shut off my brain fairly hard to not think of that pain, because I never got the opportunity to go back and do-over.  Each time I tried, my family got in the way.

I’ve had some pretty lousy jobs.  Lots of sleepless nights, feeling helpless between what I know is right and office politics.  I’ve had to exist in situations well away from my comfort zones and ethics.  But my honesty and hard work has paid off.  Even for a position I don’t particularly care for.  I can get a wage rate higher than average for someone who has my “professional” college rating.  Because I worked hard.

Someone close to me, who has more degrees than I do, doesn’t have that.  This person’s choices and hardassness are the things that keep them from doing what is their passion, and instead, is stuck in low paying jobs, even with the degrees.  Most of the time I land one of these higher paying jobs, there is a comment of “must be nice.”

Well, I have to say that I’ve put my time in.  I didn’t take short cuts.  I put up with and handled  a lot of situations I had no control over, and I have more of a choice now of who I work for and what I do.  I’ve stuck to my principles but I haven’t let them, at least in my professional career, stop me from doing what I need to, for my home, my family, and my bank account.  I have more of a say in how things get done and I’ve had other professionals who have much more smarts than me, trust me to get done what I need to, because of those ethics and that hard work.

It’s the dig that gets me.  Combined with other situations from this same person.  Especially since this same person knows exactly what my grandmother did and doesn’t really give a damn about it.

Yes, I am holding on to that.  I wish I could let it go but I know I can’t.  I’ve tried.  I’ve tried to change my life, my outlook, my circumstances.

I’ve mentioned being alone when I published my first book.  Stories aren’t something that anyone can take away.  They can delay it, cause me no end of headaches, but I am never going to stop writing.

I had someone tell me once that different people go to work for different reasons.  And what sticks in my mind was sitting ass deep in half-frozen mud, getting observations and shots of country squirrels, in that nature preserve.

You know what also sticks in my mind?

It’s pretty hard to take anything serious after watching a baby squirrel, perhaps three months old, try to run with a Twinkee in its mouth.

Live.  Dream.  Laugh.  Love.  Don’t get good at what you hate doing, because you’ll become an expert at it.  Do what you have to, to get where you want to be.  You don’t have to have a master plan, bullet pointed out.  It can be something simple, like where to go on a Tuesday night.

Because right now, I’m putting the energy that I was (oh, Jana, thank you so much for reminding me and kicking me in the ass) putting into bad situations into my writing, my yard, quilting, and building the plans for where I want to be.  I’m getting a roof rack for the car, finding a decent kayak, and I will be, when I can stand the heat and sun, out on the water this summer, and figuring out what I should have twenty five years ago.  And maybe see another baby squirrel with a Twinkee…

 

If you’ve read any of my blog, you know that I am happy to be in my 40’s instead of my 20’s.

While I’ve tried my damnedest lately to put my love out into the world around me, I must confess, a large part of “me” has been rather miserable for months.  What I’ve been struggling with is that I am healing.  Rather large parts of me are healing.  I get sick of saying that.

More importantly, beyond the healing, I’m starting to feel the loss of letting go.  Sort of weird, since that’s been kind of the point.

There’s been books and movies that are like a rock to my head.  Completely changing my perspective on how and what and who.  I had a conversation recently that was one of those “well F’ing duh!” moments, to clean up one of a friend’s favorite sayings.

As I’ve said repeatedly, my ex and I warred about a lot in the second part of our relationship.

This latest rock to the head, that had absolutely nothing to do with anything other than a TV show, sort of snuck up on me.   A comment that a friend made.  Three days later, I was getting ready for sleep, and all sorts of little things in my head went… “click.”

Parts of me still wonder at what, exactly, changed in my long term relationship.  Because I can pinpoint it to a single conversation.  I’m doing that less and less.  But I can tell you, early on, one of the moments that absolutely melted me, with my ex.

I was having a rough night.  A very rough night.  Me ex did puppet theater with stuffed animals on the end of the bed to make me laugh.  I actually wound up snorting, almost not making it to the bathroom, because I was belly rolling so much.

What I can also pinpoint was a change in how I viewed relationships, as a whole, and life in general.  It was a book I read.  A romance novel.  And if you had asked me at the time, what I was reading, I would have bluffed it off.  Jennifer Crusie’s “Anyone But You.”

A very simple love story.  Funny.  Quirky.  No paranormal.  No intense drama.  No life-altering injuries or car accidents.  Just two people, neighbors, meeting and finding they have things in common.

There was a section: “I want a woman who has a burning need to be with me and watch old movies and laugh.”  Alex Moore is referring to his dating life and how he doesn’t want to be with someone who is only looking at him as a breeding ground.

I have to say, this changed my mind on a lot.  I’ve miscarried.  A lot.  And I’ve never had that time in my life where it seemed like all my friends/family were getting married and having babies.  This isn’t a regret or anything and for me, personally,  I was always of the mindset that if I had a child, I did.  If I didn’t, I didn’t.  I don’t know as I could deal with a young child now, and it is both happy and sad that I am in my 40’s.  I know I could have years ago and been quite happy.  I also know that the miscarriages had a lot to do with why my relationship ended.  I’m not going into the whole of that.

What I got to thinking about, after I read that book, was that I didn’t want someone looking at me like I was a breeder or a mattress to bounce on- the two extremes.

Looking back on my life, I can see why I fell for the people I did.  How I melted, inside, and when.  Part of my feeling loss is that I think I wound up cheating myself out of being aware of other ways of having a relationship by staying in the one I did.  Someone who had a better sense of humor, or more patience, or wanted to be with me, instead of living up to parental expectations.

There is someone I miss, that I’ve met since my ex and I broke up.  Someone who could have been an incredibly close friend.  I stopped it from going to a really bad place for both of us because, like with my ex, I can’t live life in an image-conscious world.  Nor can I deal with someone with a snap temper or makes assumptions all the time.

It’s the loss of laughter and the loss of being around someone who did actually understand me.  Quite well, in fact.  I knew it would have ended badly.  The friendship did end somewhat hard, and that I do regret to a small amount.

The thing is, even with all of this, I’m sitting here, listening to love songs on youtube or waiting for them to come on the radio.  Letting them melt away my disappointments and losses.  Not something I ever expected to be doing.  I don’t feel the need to bury myself in hard rock music anymore, and I can listen to Daughtry or Metallica and just let it pump me up and dance.  I sing, off-tune, at the top of my lungs, and I no longer care if it’s sappy.

I’m thinking about “Anyone But You” and letting it not only take away the sting, but also… helping me figure out what I want in life, because that’s a heck of a lot harder than figuring out what I don’t.  And I honestly don’t believe that you have to be in your teens or twenties to find all that warmth and comfort of a good relationship.  I’m thinking about comments someone made, about their own relationship, another about a TV show, and going “huh, well, that mentality explains what went wrong and I can let it go now.”

I’m thinking about how I feel after shooting bow or working hard in my garden.  That I really can change my life around and not keep putting energy into people anymore that can’t see what’s important to me.  Because there are love songs and stories out in the world.  There are people who get married a second or third time.  There are people who get their high school diplomas at 86 or retire into a second “career” that holds their passion.  People who remake their lives from utter disaster.  People who make their families.

So while I do feel the loss, it’s going to be okay.  I can eat this elephant and come out the other side.  There is such goodness in the world and I’m only going to miss out on more if I keep banging my head against a wall of someone not hearing me or assuming what I am saying or that I am waiting around for.  I bought a gorgeous mandevilla for my garden, some fruit bushes, a couple of nut trees.  My peonies are going to come up strong and healthy.  My rose bush is going into it’s third year of growth.  And I am going to get over a gallon of blackberries this year.  Well over.  So much more important.

Right now, I’m about pudding inside.   One of my babes is sitting at my feet as I’m editing a Lamp Light, and her soft, warm purr is rubbing up against my toes.

Sighs.  As much as I’ve struggled with Oak lately, and I have a good storyline started for Stew’s book, and I’ve edited the heck out of Hawthorne, my intent was to work on the Haven Point series this summer, along with my RPG and board games.

A month ago, I was so happy with Ash about to come out.  Knowing it was coming out.  And I wish I could share the little smile of contentedness sneaking up my face at the moment.

In the two weeks since, and just beforehand, I’ve had several worlds of grief slam down on me.  Things I’ve been ignoring for a long time, since I know there’s no solution.  No nice fit.  I feel trapped, and I keep coming back to this, each and every time.  Intellectually, I know I’m not.  And I know I’ll make the same decision I’ve made in the past, knowing my situations won’t change because they are dependent on circumstance and the people around me.  Logically, I can’t think of a good way out that will clear the problems, and haven’t been able to in years, because people don’t want to listen or can’t be bothered.

But with these eyes of love softly gazing up from my foot…  happy memories are more my focus.  I’m not thinking about the irritation about to come back, face first, in the morning, or the other problems I have on my plate.  I’m thinking about this little kitten I took in, all fluffy and spikey at the same time, eyes sealed shut, sick as anything, and the absolute chaos my house was in after she healed up.   That little fluffball turned into a 15 pound chill cat, twice the size of her mother, hanging out on my upstairs ledge, elbow hooked over the landing, giving me that look like, “hey, man, sunbeam.  All is right with the world.”  All she needs is a pair of those Risky Business dark black sunglasses, or a Bruce Willis fedora.

I’m reminded of the choices I’ve made.  The rules are somewhat working.  So are the tattoos.  I’ve got some Gordon Lightfoot going and this afternoon, I hit a slew of stations in a row that  played those songs I’ve had stuck in my head for a while.

Jana’s moon… I had her design it to remind me to keep an eye on the horizon.  On my goals.  On the markers I’ve put into my life to stay on the path I keep veering from or get knocked off.

The scenes I’ve just edited for Lamp Light….

“Small steps.  If he could just take small steps, he wouldn’t detonate.”

And

“As he began to waken, Drew couldn’t ignore that his entire body felt like a tongue after a heavy night of drinking.  Fuzzy and thick.  It was going to be a long day.  Not one he was keen on starting.  Scratching his prickly throat a couple of times convinced him that he wanted the itch of a starting beard even less.  He felt dirty and scummy.  And he was somewhere.  Not lost but somewhere.”

Yes.  I’m somewhere.  Not lost but somewhere.  This isn’t a new beginning, as that would frustrate me beyond bearing.  I’m editing.  Cutting out a word or two, adding in a half sentence.  I think… no more new rules, like I had been contemplating.  This week, I’m going to take some time and use some cardboard boxes to make a fort for the cats, start changing the house from winter to summer, and catch the warm scent of coming rain on the front porch.  Edit.

‘Cause, hey man.  Sunbeam.  All is right with the world…

I’ve just finished watching one of my favorite West Wing episodes- The Supremes.

I’m not really sure how I’m feeling at the moment.  And that’s okay.  I’ve had to say goodbye to loved ones and dream-choices this week.  More than one of each.

When I was a teenager, my mother and I didn’t always see eye to eye on things.  Heck, what teenager/parent does?  I’ve stated several times that she didn’t understand me very well.  But I always knew that she loved me.

I had a recent conversation with someone about love.  Pain.  Loyalty.  The damage we inflict on each other- intentional, unintentional, well-meaning, and others.  And tonight, after watching this favorite episode of mine, I am reminded so strongly of my mother.

There was a lot of confusion between her and I, and I didn’t realize until about ten years ago that most of her reactions to my approach of her for advice was out of both love for me and fear for me.  I had an inkling, then, and the cause for it, and I did understand it was justified.  We lived under threat for a long time.  Most don’t know it and she was considered aloof by most of her co-workers.  They didn’t see the shy, modest woman my mother was, and that she had the balls to walk away from money, position, power, unbelievable amounts of emotional pressure and blackmail, and a very dangerous, violent husband.

I didn’t see the fear in her until well after the divorce went through.  Not the extent to which my mother felt it.  Nearly two decades, actually.

I’ve had two thoughts repeatedly, since her passing.  Independent of each other.  And it wasn’t until after watching this episode- The Supremes, that I put together we both got something we worked for out of her death.

At the end, she turned to me one day and said, “You’re a survivor, honey.  There’s nothing life can throw at you that you can’t survive and I am so proud of you.”  She wanted to make sure that, no matter what happened to her, or anyone else, I would be able to go on, and she had been that way since I was a little girl.

What I got out of her passing is that she went without being completely broken by her failed marriage.  I won’t go into specifics about that.  Just that I made a lot of choices around that thought.  She went peacefully, in her sleep, in her own room, in her own bed, surrounded by her cats, my sister, and me.

There was a lot of time that passed between her and I, where we couldn’t quite bridge that gap, though we loved each other very much.  Someday, maybe, I’ll come to terms with that.

I know what she would say to me right now, knowing what I am feeling.  It’s making me weep in both joy and sorrow.  She went after her passion, every day.  Lived it, every day, no matter that she also lived in fear every day.  In so many ways, I think she’s one of the bravest people I’ve ever known.  Despite our disagreements and differences in philosophy.

I had to turn around to her at one point and say that love isn’t always enough.    She was trying to comfort me in a bad place that I was in, emotionally, at the time.  That at least I had someone who loved me.   And it wasn’t a conversation about her and I.  My own long term relationship was falling apart.  Telling her this cut me deeply.  Cut her deeply, though I didn’t intend to cause her any pain.

Love is every where.  It isn’t enough, by itself.   So I am using that thought to launch myself into more.  To love more deeply, more freely, more openly.  Because while it isn’t enough, and it wasn’t enough to save my long term relationship, and it wasn’t enough, alone, to bridge the gap between my mother and I, and it wasn’t enough to bridge another that I have been dealing with for the past fifteen months where the timing has been just plain bad, it is there and it is a doorway to all that joy, reflection, connection, healing, wonder, and just plain awesomeness that is out there in the world.

Jana asked me recently what my next book for Ridge Lake would be about.  I think… I think I have my story line figured out.  The basics, anyway.  I’d rather be happy than right and I’d rather leave myself open to pain than to go without love again and I’d rather be alone than to live one more day in bickering and I’d rather tell someone I love them than not.  Even if the meaning of it changes on me, and more than once.  I think I’ve found a good connection within me, to start writing Stew’s story.

Be happy.  And if you can’t be happy, find it within yourself to seek happiness anyway.  One of the best pieces of advice I’ve gotten is: “you don’t have to have a plan.  All you have to do is pick up your anchor and go with it.”  That, coupled with my mother’s love of every day?  It is my strength.

Bless you all.

 

ASH IS OUT!  Who-hooo!

What an awesome day to celebrate.

Even more so because my princess kitty is starting to feel better, with her insulin injections.  I am being tap-tap-tapped on the leg right at the moment.

While I am sad to see winter go, I am happy for my flowers starting to bloom.  I was able to get outside in the cool air and begin weeding and early spring clean up.  I have plans to till out my front yard this year, recondition the soil, and rip apart three bulb beds.

And today, I got sleep.  Heavy, cleansing, healing sleep.  Lots of it!

To top it off, I think I’ve finally resolved a personal problem that’s been bothering me for over a year.  What to do about it.  A couple of them, actually.  Time for a new rule to be put in place.  The itch to do more house downloading is hitting, so I will have plenty of time to think this one over, and I think it will be about no longer celebrating the anniversaries of anything.  Just take each day as it comes and forget everything else, and if I remember something good, cool.  If I remember or think something else, well, I have a hammock chair to swing in and some pretty cool, weird things to get into or a book to write.

I feel free.  So free!  Peace and quiet in the brain pan.  It’s like someone shook my etch-a-sketch and I got a clean slate.

These decisions started for me ten years ago.  Closer to twelve.  And I used to get pissed and hurt about that.  That I wasted my life and time.

But today, Ash is out.  My third book.  And it doesn’t matter how long it took me.  I took that chance.

I can look back now and say- hey, you know, I’ve done some good and some fun in my life.  I’m not dead and I need to start thinking of my life as life and not my daily obituary.  I’ve had these thoughts before.  It’s time to turn them around and add them into my other daily choices, such as playing room ball and putting my artwork on the walls and lighting candles over my tv set.  To keep keeping things simple.  To reflect.  And if I want to spend the day sleeping, to go for it!

Celebrate in any way I feel like.  ‘Cause I’m looking over in the corner right now, where my hammock chair is.   I remember moving into this house and my first Christmas here.  How I bought about the biggest tree I could afford and get my hands on, and that’s where I put it.  I celebrated my freedom that way and I lost my way a few times.  Tomorrow, I will be putting that tree back in the attic from this past holiday season, since it’s warm enough to get upstairs.  I’ll be bringing down some other things to sell or get rid of or put on the walls and say: hey, this was cool.  This was fun.  I have my sewing room almost complete and I can start making those weird rugs I’ve always wanted.  Make heavy, quilted curtains, full of rainbow koi for my middle room with it’s bay window, so I have something special to look at all winter.

Celebrate.  Because it’s a gorgeous day, with my flowers blooming, ASH being out, and my heart’s finally clear.   I have to go light some candles now and blow up some soup on the stove.  Time for dinner.  Beef and barley, with croutons, and a grilled cheese sandwich.  How awesome is that?

 

 

Well.  That was interesting!

I just stepped outside for a moment, to take a break, and two men were walking down my street.  They stopped to speak with me for a moment.  One saw the back of my car and recognized my penname from Facebook!

This is wonderful!  He asked my advice on writing his own book and we chatted for a few moments.  How awesome!

This, after helping to save a wounded ‘possum on my way home from work.  Poor thing was dragging a leg and its ear was split.  I called for help and advice, picked the babe up, put it in my car, and drove it to the closest vet, after getting some wonderful assistance from a wildlife rehabber.  How cool is that?  This is what I remember doing years ago.  I have done some, since, but my focus has been more on what’s in front of me, which is normally abused domestic animals.

I feel truly blessed today.  Weird, but blessed.

All I can think at the moment is that it’s nice to get back to being.  To do, to give, to love, to cherish the life I have and accept that goodness is all around, no matter how odd or possibly painful or wonderful it may be, and as long as I’m open to it, more will come.  As exhausted I am at the moment, between stress and very little sleep, I feel very much alive, and all that nattering that’s been going on in the back of my head is quiet.  Because if I hadn’t been so tired, I would have stayed at work longer and I wouldn’t have been able to help that poor creature suffering in pain or met the wonderful people at the clinic or the wildlife rehabber over the phone or any of the other people who helped me find a way to manage to do this.

So many wonderful things can happen out of the worst and that animal will get the help it needs from very caring people.  It’s going to a good place, where it will have safety and freedom, no matter if the leg is completely useless.

LOVE IS!

Blessings, all!

“That’s dogs as subtle as a hand grenade in a barrel of oatmeal…”  FHLH.

Oh, so NEEDED Looney Tunes today.  Saw a sarcasm comment on  FB today with Sylvester and Foghorn Leghorn and decided to watch some youtube.  Not complaining about work, but after 12 straight hours of accounting, my brain is MUSH!  I thought I had prepared enough with Ben & Jerry’s pints.  Nope.

Laughter is and will always be the best medicine.

I want to thank everyone who has come to Murder By Six’s FB page these past couple of weeks.  I am so looking forward to Ash being “on the shelf.”  I’m hoping to get back to writing soon, as I had to take a break from Oak for a bit.  And if you like the cover, please give Jana a shout out at Canvas in Motion on FB.  I’m sure she’d love to hear from you.

For myself, I’m taking the rest of the night off, putting up my feet in some funky socks, and dream of pleasant things and laughter coming back into my life.  Now that I’ve had my reset from a snotty, opinionated, narrow-minded, blabbermouth chicken giving me ideas on what to blow up next…  LOL!  Gotta LOVE it!

Blessings, all

Katrin

Okay, so most people know I have an issue remembering trivia.  Or even words.  The correct words to say.  Lots of things have popped out of my mouth over the years and sometimes, there’s this little beat and I think- did I just say that?

Steve’s Glitter Bombs.

So lately, I have had this series of thoughts going through my head.  A bit over a year, actually.  Sometimes, I find it’s instant calming.  Or embarrassing.  And yeah, this is about as much as I’m going to admit to anyone what those thoughts are, in specific detail.

The thing is, it comes with a music track.  In my head.  Weird, because most of my “meditations” over the years are completely silent.  This is where the trivia problem comes in.

When my ex and I split the first time, there was a song on the radio that used to make me cry all the time.  Rascall Flatts “Broken Road.”  Don’t get me wrong.  I love the song.  When I’m happy and it comes on the radio, I will sing it at the top of my lungs.

I was just getting into country music at the time.  Love stories.  Good feelin’ stuff, instead of focusing more on my horror books and war movies.    Not much is ever going to take the place of Kelly’s Heroes.  But hey, nothing says I can’t add to that, with other stuff.  Might love a good steak, but having that ploop of yummy mashed potatoes and butter right along with it is never a bad thing.  I heard this one song, Ticks, that makes me crack up laughing.  (And yes, I have used this song to inspire me for a scene in Hawthorne.)  This is how I got sucked into country music.  All these hysterically funny songs.  Tequila Makes Her Clothes Fall Off.  Sic ‘Em on a Chicken.  (Another one I used to inspire Cavenaugh’s chicken problem in the Ridge Lake series.)  Pray for You.  I hear music in my head all the time.  This is cool.  Just not to movies or meditations.

So this sound track to this thought series I’ve had lately.  I know my heart is better.  I don’t feel the sting and bitterness anywhere near what I used to.  And not what I want to focus on here at all.  It’s just a reference point, so you understand how I got to the end of a really emotionally satisfying book and… well.  You’ll see in a minute.  Damn glitter bombs…

This track starts in my head the other night.  I’m curled up in bed.  I’m warm and happy.  I’m putting the finishing polish on Ash, which is coming out in two weeks.  Making sure I’ve got all the references right, since I’m also working on book 8, Oak.  I’m really excited about all of it.  I put in a hard handful of hours and once again got sucked into my own story line.

The “movie” starts.  This song I’ve been hearing on the radio starts playing in my head and I think it’s Rascall Flatts.  Which is not a good thing.  The last thing I want to be thinking about is my ex in any way, especially with this movie I got going in my head.  (Yes, it’s about a person.  Real or fiction, since I do write romance, I’m never going to admit to.)

I start thinking “nononono!”  Cue a record scratching noise.  Ripping the needle off the vinyl, just to get the image of my ex out of my head, when in this movie, I’m curled up with someone I’m happy about and listening to this song I’ve heard on the radio.

This noise leads me into a funky beating song that I still can’t remember the name to, which turns into “Brickhouse” by the Commodores.   All while, in actuality, I’m in bed alone and this movie about a person I’m curled up with is playing.

Again, the funky beat doesn’t go, but here I am, car dancing in bed, lying on my side, to Brickhouse.  Come on, don’t judge.  I know you car dance.

Ice skating comes into my head.  Kurt Browning.  The footwork on ice.  Same reason I’m attracted to hockey.  Ice skating which I used to watch with Mom.

Sigh.  Great.   Happy memories, but still.  Mom.  And this ice performance was the year I met my ex.  1997.

Again, more people and thoughts and memories in with this romantic, feel good movie that started a year ago that basically came out of no where.  Especially since I don’t normally, believe it or not, fantasize about these sorts of things.  Not in “real life.”

It’s only been in the past, oh, two years that I have.  I don’t look at people that way.  I never have.  What I find attractive is so individual, to the person.  Sometimes it hands.  Sometimes, eyes.  The way someone laughs.  So this movie is even more startling to me that it comes so frequently.  Part of why I’m irritated that this song, the one I can’t bloody remember the name of is putting Rascall Flatts and dragging my ex, and now my mom and Brickhouse, into this imaginary bed of mine and I can’t turn it off.  Especially since I just went to see a hockey game.  And I’ve discovered that watching a goalie drop on the ice the way they do puts other images in my head, the ones I am also not used to.

When I sit down to write an intimate scene- sure, I can picture it in my head.  But I’m not the main character.  Not really.  I only wrote two books like that.  And I’m happy with both.  This little movie I get, I finally figure out where it came from after a couple of months, and to be honest, I’m astonished it keeps coming back and yes, I know I’m repeating myself here.

So I get out of bed.  Do more work on Ash.  Not a problem.  I love the story.  Love it.

Next day, I get up.  Do my thing.  Go to work.  This song that plays with the movie starts on the radio.  Great.  I have the movie playing now, with the right sound track, and I’m on my way to work.  Not drifting off to sleep, like how the movie actually ends.

It’s now three days later.  I had the movie go through my head a few times.  Okay.  I can deal with this.  I’m almost done with Ash.  I need to look up a reference, since I’m also working on Oak.  I start reading Hawthorne, making sure I have the backstory in Hawthorne right, since I’m about to put out Ash.  (Hawthorne is the book right before Oak, and I have both referenced in Ash.)  I got so sucked into Hawthorne.  I’ve read it twice now.  In three days.  And I am itching to get my hands into editing, with all my missed words and spelling errors.  And, yes, I’ve found a few places where I knew the word I meant to type but put in the wrong one.  Like I meant to write “bullet” thudded in the ground and I wound up writing “shot-put”.    Ah, well.  It was still a projectile.

So I get to the end.  Just around three this afternoon.  This is the best part for me.  My feel good movie moment.  The very last paragraph of Hawthorne.  I set down my reader copy.  I’m happy.  Got that emotional buzz going on as I’m warm and curled up.  And the movie starts.  With the soundtrack.  The right soundtrack.  Cue music… “You had my heart, a long long time ago…”  “Broken Road…”  Scratching record… Bum-bum. Ba-bum…  Flashing ice skates.

I have decided to end my suffering.  I don’t want to always think about the ending of Hawthorne, which is partially based on this movie I’ve had going through my head, with Brickhouse in the background and “Long, long time ago….”, with all the other stuff going along with it.  Even though, in some ways, it’s funnier.

The song?  In Case You Didn’t Know…  I will probably listen to this song over and over.  All those things I never did as a teenager.  But I have a strange feeling I am going to hear the Bump-bum-ba-bum-bum-bum of Brickhouse every time I get to the end, right when Den’s problems don’t matter anymore.