( bunyip and puggley )

It was not a coincidence that today's memory challenge was about animals. I have been trying to get up the courage to write this post. I still don't think I have the courage but I need to write it now.

Monday, my 50th birthday was not spent with cake and ice cream. There was no quiet dinner out at a favorite restaurant. Instead I came home from work early to spend a few last hours with my best four-legged friend Chelsie. Her time had come. And as always is the case, it is too soon for those of us left behind.

Was it only May that I wrote this post about her? I knew then that my time with her was coming to an end. Later in May I posted the sunflower episode. After that she slowed down even more, rarely wanting to move from one of her two favorite spots in the library, tucked back in corners behind a chair. She was less interested in saying hello in the morning or when I came home from work. She would skip meals for several days. After that it came fast.

Monday afternoon I sat with her for the last time.

I spoke softly and recalled every step of the journey we had taken together over the last 14 years. She came into my life at my absolutely lowest point, when I was living in New Orleans. She would jump up like a kangaroo to greet me each day, I reminded her of the great escape I gave her from the pound, the agility classes we had taken together and how much she used to love the tunnel and the poles. I laughed again at how she never met a puddle she didn't want to roll in and how, in her younger years, she believed children and ducks at the park were meant for herding. She and my big orange cat Benjamin were the best of friends. I don't know if she thought she was a cat or if she thought the cat was a dog but the two of them did everything together, including getting into cabinets for their favorite treat, bread. She wasn't food motivated but she did love the scraps of plain tortillas and a spoonful of vanilla ice cream.

In New Orleans life was rough and many a day I didn't want to get out of bed, not even to go to work. But I got out of bed for her.

On the trip moving from New Orleans back home to California Chelsie was supposed to ride shot-gun but instead she scooted over as close as she could get, her nose always under the steering wheel. And when I got pulled over for speeding I think it was her goofy clown face that saved me from getting that much-deserved ticket.

She was terrified of most men but once we were in California and she met me soon-to-be husband, she didn't hesitate to give him all the love she had reserved for me. She was content to sleep on the floor on the side of the bed until someone got up in the middle of the night and then she would quickly jump up and claim as much of it as she could. She and Benjamin would sit on the chest in front of the window to watch for me to come home. When she injured her back and had major surgery I had to move the chest and not let her jump anymore. I think she began to die a little bit back then, so much did that girl love to jump.

When Benjamin died she mourned him for months and some of the light went out of her eyes.

Monday I knew it was time. I told her to go find Benjamin. That it was okay to leave me now.

A wonderful vet, Dr. Apple, came to our home so we didn't have to subject her to the vet's office. (In recent years she had become so fearful of the vet that she had to be sedated for basic exams.) I worried that she would give me a look of betrayal at the end but instead I saw her finally relax and look more peaceful than I have seen in longer than I want to remember.

This morning when I came downstairs there was no black and white clown face to greet me. The house is emptier than I could have imagined it would be.

Chelsie was not my first dog nor will she be my last. But she was the dog I needed most for one of the toughest struggles in my life. I was so proud to call her friend.

I'm still here. Can't sleep. For some reason this Meme from a friend seemed like a good idea to do.

Subject: 37 ODD Things about me

37 ODD Things about you! If you read this, you must fill it out and post it.... or not.


1. Do you like blue cheese? No

2. Have you ever smoked? Yes and I have the lungs to prove it

3. Do you own a gun? NO

4. What flavor Kool Aid was your favorite? Grape?

5. Do you get nervous before doctor appointments? Not really.

6. What do you think of hot dogs? They're evil little fellers. But tasty.

7. Favorite Christmas movie? Bridget Jones??

8. What do you prefer to drink in the morning? COFFEE immediately

9. Can you do push ups? A couple. girlie ones.

10. What's your favorite piece of jewelry? My engagement ring.

11. Favorite hobby? According to my husband...writing...that opens a whole can of wormie things.

12. Do you have A.D.D.? What?

13. Do you wear glasses/contacts? Glasses that I never wear. Ever.

14. Middle name? Elizabeth. I'm kind of a Queen.

15. Name 3 thoughts at this exact moment? Man. I'm tired. I should be sleeping. My stomach is getting pretty freakin big. I can't stop reading this dumb book.(Infected)

16. Name 3 drinks you regularly drink? Diet coke, coffee, water. Repeat.

17. Current worry? Will I ever sell another book?

18. Current hate right now? My stomach. Gah. Need a personal trainer and chef

19. Favorite place to be? Home

20. How did you bring in the new year. Um....oh yeah. At hub's friend's

21. Where would you like to go?
We're thinking Disney or Mexico..soonish

22. Name three people who will complete this? Me. Myself. I.

23. Do you own slippers? Do they have to match? Do I have to wear them??

24 What shirt are you wearing? Black t shirt. Plain a la Johnny de la Cash

25. Do you like sleeping on satin sheets? No. Too slippery

26. Can you whistle? YES

27. Favorite color? Black

28. Would you be a pirate? Only if Johnny Depp was involved

29. What songs do you sing in the shower? Weird ones

30. Favorite Girl's Name? Jade

31. Favorite boy's name? Max

32. What's in your pocket right now? NO pockets on me at the moment. Usually spare change.

33. Last thing that made you laugh? Hub. Staring cutely at me while I read.

34. What vehicle do you drive? A messy Mom Van

35. Worst injury you've ever had? Post delivery stiches. Um. Ow.

36. Do you love where you live? Calgary is good except traffic.

37. How many TVs do you have in your house? 3. But we only use one.

Want to see a really colorful and interesting take on magnetic fields?


Check this out:
http://www.colourlovers.com/blog/2008/07/16/magnetic-movie-the-colors-of-magnetic-fields/

Loads of information and vivid imagination at work.

hello friends! i was wondering if anyone had any experience with Amy Butler patterns and/or fabrics? the frenchy bag in particular. i'm in LOVE WITH HER STUFF!!! are the patterns fairly easy (aka for a fairly novice yet smart sewer) and are the fabrics as vivid as they seem on the site?

also, where have you bought the fabric and patterns from? on amy's site they list about 15 sites, but i don't know which one i should go with.

any help and/or pictures would be wonderful! and once i make the bag, i'll post!

Hey crafty people, sorry again for the text-only post... again!

I have a couple of questions. First, is there any way to get a faded look on a new photograph? Like, when you find a really old photo of your grandparents and it's faded and kind of washed out looking? I want that effect for an art project I'm working on, but I'm stuck. Any ideas are would be much help (I have time to play around).

Second questions: Have any of you worked with silver leafing? I'm dying to try it on a few things but I want to know if anyone has had any bad experiences or anything, of it it's a total bitch to work with. Also, can it be applied to jewelry, or is it not supposed to be worn against skin?

Thanks in advance, and I promise I'll post pictures next time!

Edited to add: I'm looking more for ideas that don't involve editing on computers, if that's possible!

Because you were a lovely 1 hour 37 minutes.

Have any of y'all seen the movie Charlie Bartlett? It's that one that's sort of Ferris Bueller's Day Off with prescription drugs. Basically, it's an over-educated, misplaced high school kid who turns the boys' bathroom into a confessional/ psych clinic. It's hugely funny, painfully honest, and exactly how a good YA book would look/ sound if you translated it to the big screen.

Anyway, the pacing at the end was a bit uneven, but Charlie, I can't really feel bad about that, because the rest of it was so good. And the ending was sweet. Sweet as in wicked. Well, sweet as in awww too.

Anyway, *love*. :D

It's been a while, but I'm back at the jewelry making.
( Wanna see? )

Chained Earrings



( text )

If anyone needs a good dose of teens to help with details in your writing, I suggest you come visit writing camp! These teens are the best. I'm loving spending my mornings with them.

Every year we take one day and walk outside to different spots to write. Today we dodged the rain and thunderstorms forecast all week and took our walk. Eighteen campers from 7th to 12th grade spread out in clumps between Rick and me as we walked past the bus garage, through the woods, and into the cemetery.

The cemetery is a great place to write. One of the characters in my wip spends lots of time walking in the cemetery, so today was a great chance to gather specific details. I scribbled down a page of notes, including the rules of the cemetery posted at the entrance, before we got back together and read some of what we had written.

Then it was off to the river. I had the good fortune to bring up the end of the line and be walking behind a chatting ninth and tenth grader. I started scribbling down bits and pieces of their conversation. On the way back, another group was talking and said a phrase that my mc needs to say--in fact, it spurred a whole scene I hadn't thought of before.

Walking back, I observed the clothes the group was wearing, the shoes (or lack of), the bags they carried. Everything I needed to know about my characters was right in front of me.

I know some of the campers read this blog. (RW are you reading this? You can comment!!) I hope they realize how special they are--and how much they help me with my writing. I'll be sad when camp is over on Friday!

Not a New Kids? Nsync? Back Street Boys song, but I am going to be away so I won't get a chance to read many posts or comment, but I still love all my LJ friends. By the way, even if sometimes I don't comment on posts, I'm still there reading....

I love me some LJ writers....

I have been making cake or cupcakes here and there, but my digital camera died (I suspect cameracide, by my toddler) a few months ago, so I haven't been getting pictures. I took this picture on a disposable camera, and the flash washed it all out; sorry.
I had a lot of fun with this cake, though. A while back, ladycrim (I think) posted a wedding cake pic with some funky awesome cake toppers. One of the cakes had a slice taken out of it and placed on top as part of the decorating. I thought that was awesome, and it gave me the idea for this cake which I think of as a "spiral staircase" cake.
Behind a cut, in case it's a large image:
( Read more... )

Is there anything that works for mold release? I heard cornstarch? I am currently using a universal mold release.
Any help would be great.
Thanks 

Before:



After:

 Here are the rules:

Someone starts the Round Robin....in this case it will be me.

I will post the opening to a story.

The first person to read it and want to participate posts in the comments that the continuing story can be found on their blog.
(you have about 20 minutes to post the rest an addition to the story on your blog.)

Copy this post, and add it to your post with the continuing story.

The next person will post to your blog that the continuing story can be found on their blog and they will have to follow the same directions as above!

If you want to play, keep following the blogs until you find the end of the round robin chain!

This LJ Round Robin was started at:

goadingthepen

If it wasn’t for Hailey, I would still be stuck in Andy’s closet-- potentially, the most embarrassing moment of my life.  I should consider myself lucky, if he would have walked in two minutes earlier, he would have caught me scrounging under the bed. Getting caught would have meant trying to come up with a reason I was in his room in the first place. The truth—definitely not an option!

When I was at Children's Book World on Saturday, I picked up several books. One of them, which I've been reading in dollops* since then, was Honeybee: Poems by Naomi Shihab Nye. My only negative criticism of this book? The subtitle on the front cover is a wee bit misleading, because the book contains not only poems, but also "Short Prose". Which is made clear if you open the book, since the inside title page says "Poems and Short Prose", as does the copy at, say, Barnes & Noble. Not sure why the cover design abbreviated the subtitle, but there it is. And if you think that's a minor criticism, you're entirely correct.

The thing is, this book is delicious. Nye opens the book with a poem entitled "Honeybee", and bee references recur later the book, particularly in a section dedicated to bee poems. References to airline travel, family, American politics and war are common denominators in many of the poems and short essays as well. They all - poems and prose alike - read true. Nye's words shine from the pages. I began to suspect that were I to open the book in the dark, I would need no book light; the words would simply glimmer on the page. This proved not to be true, and I found myself surprised.

This book is one of the very best kind of books. It makes you think. It makes you feel smart. It educates, without any pedantry. It amuses without stooping to do so. It inspires you to want to write. Write more. Write better. The one downside? It is the sort of book that causes your internal editor to start whispering loudly about how you'll never be that talented. But inside the pages are the sorts of poems and essays that bolster you enough to tell your internal editor to shut the hell up. This book has made me want to begin writing short prose of my own. Heavens knows what I'll do with the product if I actually follow through, but the book has at least inspired a desire in me, and that is something, I think.

Here's a sample of one of the poems that made me really ponder, and not in a Pooh-like way, either. It is not next to the poems entitled "Letters My Prez Is Not Sending" or "Someone You Will Not Meet", although logically it could be. But the poems and essays that weigh the most are not piled together, where they might drag the whole book down. They are judiciously scattered, to take you by surprise. But I digress.

Watch Your Language
Pleasant words are a honeycomb,
sweet to the soul
and healing to the bones.
~Proverbs 16:24

A militant is not a man
who orders stealth bombers
to devastate a neighborhood.
He has a lot of money
so he is not a militant.
A militant is a man
whose 14-year-old son
was killed last week.
He is now out of his mind.
He could do something dangerous
and he has no money at all.
Watch him.

This poem about language reminds me of another language-related poem in the book. Okay, it reminds me of the final essay in the book, too, which is entitled "Gate A-4" and is about a four-hour delay at an airport. Or rather, it is about humanity and the ties that bind, although it is set in an airport during a delay. The poem I'm reminded of, however, is a sly one called "The Dirtiest 4-Letter Word", which is found on page 108 of the book.

The Dirtiest 4-Letter Word

is "self" says the sign on a church
and I almost run off the road.

What about Kill? Hate? Rape?
Even "whip" sounds worse than "self"

or might we try "lies"? Now I remember why
Sunday School gave me a stomach ache.

Those of you with a customer account set up at Barnes & Noble can get an extended peek inside this book (up to page 30, whereas Amazon's look inside only goes to 16. The bit at B&N includes several short essays as well as a number of poems. I was particularly charmed by the essay entitled "Wee Path", which is about a walk in Dumfries, Scotland, although there's not a bad selection among the ones offered there.) If you check out the book, my guess is that you will conclude, as I did, that Nye is brilliant (if you were in doubt). One of the things I admire most about her, here and in her other work, is something I aspire to in my poetry as well, at least these days. She writes good poetry, plain and simple. Not children's poetry. Just good poetry, that can be shared with children. She does not stoop low to speak to children and teens. She stands tall, raising them up with her and allowing them to stand tall as well. How marvelous.

Now, I'm not one to buy only one poetry collection in a year. Heck, I bought a picture book poetry collection authored by J. Patrick Lewis the other day (more on that some other time), and I've bought an anthology of sonnets this year, as well as Ted Kooser's Valentines and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and a few other poetry books as well. But if I were to buy only one, as of now, my choice would be Honeybee: Poems and Short Prose by Naomi Shihab Nye.

Go. Read it (and weep, and laugh, and think, and, if you remember, tell me what you thought about it).

Okay,  so I'm trying to forget that another birthday is looming (end of this week).   My sister says age is just a number.   Yes,  younger sister.   But life has been finding ways to remind me that time is marching on.

1)  Sunday,  a friend invited me to a baseball game.   Angels vs. Red Sox.   Although I've been a baseball fan most of my life,  I've never really had a favorite team.   I did have a few favorite players,  but once they were gone,  so was my loyalty.   I discovered that it's the game itself I love,  not so much the major league aspect.   I now prefer to watch minor league and even Little League games in small,  fan-friendly parks where I can actually see the action.  

My friend,  however,  has been Ms. Angel Fan since birth.   She's so loyal,  she didn't mind sitting in the hot sun,  way up in the right field pavilion.   She doesn't mind going to a huge,  generic-looking stadium,  because *her* team plays there (they swept Boston on Sunday,  which was impressive).      

She asked me when I'd last gone to a game with her,  and I realized that it was 1992!   She and her ex-husband were dating then.   Another friend who went with us Sunday,  along with her 15-year-old son,  was a newlywed (son arrived a year later).   

2)  "Mamma Mia" is now a hit at the theater,  too late for me.   I went through my ABBA phase from 2000-2002,  a bit self-consciously.   I almost wore out my greatest hits tape (yes,  audio tape).   Still know all the words to the songs.   Can even sing "Chiquitita" and "Voulez-Vous" in Spanish,  courtesy of Menudo (one of their producers must've had a thing for ABBA too).   So now that I'm over it,  the show comes out and is a big hit.   And I wouldn't have to feel self-conscious anymore.   *Sigh.*   I always was ahead of my time.

3)  The ARC-reading has confirmed what I suspected:  my novel manuscript is actually MG,  not YA as advertised.   *Oops.*   At least reading YA makes me feel young (or maybe immature),  because I still don't like dark,  edgy,  sexually-explicit material.   

4)  Just toured the house where my grandmother and aunt used to live,  now newly renovated (my cousins spent almost $50,000 fixing it up to sell).   It was like an episode of "Extreme Makeover."   The living room carpet was replaced by wood flooring;  new carpeting in the bedrooms;  new sinks,  counters,  appliances,  garage door,  landscaping,  etc.   Grandma and Aunt Kay were major pack rats,  so I'd never seen the house completely empty.   All that space,  and now there's no reason to go over there again....

Time marches on.               

That NYT review of Mamma Mia was dead-on. Lighten up, people! Who cares if it's hokey, over-the-top, or Pierce Brosnan can't sing? Not me. I LOVED IT. Sat there with a big old grin on my face for two whole hours. Life is too short, too dark, too fraught with potential disaster to not just adore a production that is so life-affirming. I loved watching Meryl Streep let loose and just have fun. And the credits at the end were a riot! The only question I had was why not switch Colin Firth (who actually can sing) and Pierce Brosnan--it didn't really matter which one played which, did it?

If you need a smile, go park your fanny in some theater seats and sing along.

An online friend just issued a challenge: who else feels like she’s in danger or drowning amid a swamp of papers? I’m not linking since it was a friends-locked post, but I’m waving back amid my not-quite-first-draft, but far far far from final draft. The structure keeps sliding around. Most of the sentences sport all kinds of dangling things or were ripped in two before they were even finished, and abandoned.
Could something look tidy here?

Big sigh. Not yet.

Then today I came in from grocery shopping and did that can-I-save-two-minutes or lose-twenty-minutes juggle as I loaded my arms with bags while telling myself: Do not do this. You’ve done this before. A bag will crash and spill and break your toes or make a mess. But I did it anyway, and this time, I won the game and reached the kitchen.

But more often shortcuts backfire. A friend of mine is sad because she didn’t get a job she applied for. She’s hardly finished telling me this story when she said, “But I don’t want to become a bitter person.”

That’s okay, I tell her. "I’ll let you know if the whine goes on too long. But you just lost something you spent a lot of time trying for. You get to be sad for more than a morning."

Gratitude is a good thing, but even the blessing-counters get to take a break sometimes and mutter, “Oh no no no no no no, this is not right.” We race to get to the end of our chores and our setbacks and our stories. If only we could. A book is big. There’s a lot of messiness to make, then wade through, then cut. There’s a lot of unknowing, all those cautious steps and a few brave get-me-through jumps. I’m trying, and it’s working only a bit, to enjoy the mud and muck of early drafting while finding smaller things to finish. I’ll pull out one sentence and shine it up. There! Lovely! I’ll let myself gaze – until I begin to see its flaws, and tuck it away for now. Then go back to writing unpretty and downright ugly sentences that may show me where I need to go.

And the silence around me starts to feel friendly again.

Longtime lurker - I love this community.

I recently bought a pair of bathing suit bottoms (bikini) and when I got home and took the tags off and washed them and tried them on sans underwear I noticed that the lining isn't as thick as it should be. It's a dark magenta color so it's not see through but I would like more lining there so that people don't see my crotch and stuff - get my drift?

Anyway, I was thinking of taking an old bathing suit lining, cutting it out, and sewing it in this new bottom. Is there any specific type of thread I should be looking for?

Or, what would you suggest? Thanks for any suggestions or comments! Sorry for the text only.