Thursday, December 20, 2012

FORGET ME NOT...I SHALL RETURN

 In the wee small hours of Friday morning, Danny, Martha and the dog and I will embark on the grueling road trip to Killen, Alabama. Lord I hate that long ride but we will stay at Andy''s house along with Chris her husband and Matt his teen age brother.

And that is where I will remain long after Dan and Martha head back to Texas. They will come after me around Feb. 6. I am very happy to spend time with Andy's gang except I'm pretty sure Martha wants Andy to steer me toward a cataract operation which I have made clear I do not want. Apparently not clear enough. The plot turns dark when I tell you Andy works in an office where by chance they do that very surgery. Just writing this makes my stomach feel like I've overeaten. I'm pulling out that old mantra....I am the master of my fate etc.


DON'T FORGET ME, I AM COMING BACK!

My son Dan, my daughter in law Martha and of course me are leaving in the wee hours of Friday morning for a grueling 14 hour trip in the car to  Killen, Alabama where I will stay with my granddaughter Andrea, her husband Chris and Matt, Chris's brother. I will visit with them and be the legal adult en residence with Matt when Andy and Chris go off to have a holiday/training session.

We will also roll on over into Mt. Pleasant, TN. where Andy's sister Sam lives (Samantha) along with Hailey and J. D. my great grandkids are for Christmas.

I am quite sure Andy and her Mother are going to try and sweet talk me into cataract surgery while I'm there. But as for me the whole things makes a bad taste in my mouth. And wouldn't you know Andy just happens to work in an office who does previouosly stated surgery.

Wednesday, December 19, 2012

WHEN IS A MISTAKE NOT A MISTAKE?

I accidently sent an email to my granddaughter Tantzi to her Aunt Tantzi. Aunt Tantzi graciously sent the email to the right person and congratulated me about my book. She went on to say she had downloaded it from Kindle and was about to read it.  One of the rare times I felt good about a mistake.

Have been meaning to give a nice thank you to Jaymme Morgan-Majors for her kind comment on Smashwords: telling me I was her favorite author. I am definitely not setting the world on fire there and seeing that is like eating chocolate with zero calories. Absolutely yummy!

Sunday, December 16, 2012

A RAINY DAY IN TEXAS:  Can't seem to get my mind in gear. I have the blog screen in front of me and instead of working on it I stare dreamily out the window at the rain.  Why do we get so upset at kids who have an assignment to finish and stare unseeing off into space?

 We usually tell them in our most mature of adult voices, "if you would only concentrate, you would already have that job done." Probably true.  But in the daydreaming I have done this morning, I have mentally visited two old and dear friends and apologized to the dog for telling her she was a bad girl for not marching masterfully into the rain when I put her out to 'go'. I also refused to share a bite of my breakfast with her, a cardinal insult from a fellow pack member.

In this household, I refer to the dog as alpha dog four. In the pack I am alpha dog three and my son and daughter in law alpha dogs one and two.  One just announced to me he had put her out earlier and she did everything expected of her.  I felt like asking him what jammed his circuits that he couldn't have shared this info sooner. Now I am going to sweet talk four to a fare thee well the rest of this day.

Saturday, December 15, 2012

 IT HAS BEEN A DAY:  I awakened to the fact we hadn't put Ceritha on the Nook and that has been our project of the day. Not totally sure accomplished it. Got a message that Nook couldn't verify some unnamed item and I would have to call them. Sooo that will have to wait until Monday.

Another project not completed for Smashwords or Kindle and now was needed for the Nook,  was a pictture of me. My hair is due for a total overhaul. I really  hadn't planned it out well 'cause the overhaul is due tomorow. Took the picture today anyway and its ok. I don't plan to say more on that.

About four in the afternoon I remembered the blog. It is now seven in the evening and here I sit in a fog trying to think of one more snippet, My son, Dan just set a steaming cup of coffee in from of me and I see he put Bailey's in. Mmmm I feel a snippet coming on.

Okay if any of you catch that picture I must give credit to Martha, my daughter in law. She pushed and tugged then patted my hair to the best shape she could, told me to put on lipstick and artfully adjusted a scarf over my T shirt. Then she held a chair throw in back of me for our backdrop while I sat down. Danny informed me he planned to take several shots. I grinned and grinned and grinned. 

Thursday, December 13, 2012

 THE GRIND:     I spent years writing my novel Ceritha. It took me that long because it was pretty   obvious I couldn't write. Re write upon re write. Friends called me anal but that was only a small percentage of it. You see I had characters I happened to be very fond of. One wants to do justice to people of value.

 I have asthma and early on in the writing it would often get out of control. I would be sick for a few weeks then need several more weeks to regain strength. By the time I looked at Ceritha again I had raised another level in writing. By that I mean I personally would not accept my previous work and so,
re write upon re write! And then there were times I refused to look at the book. Heavy duty stretching is painfull.

 In these fallow periods the people of the book would enter my thoughts and speak: "You gave us a time period, you gave us characteristics, you give us periodic life then nothing. Will you never write an important section of our lives for us to have?" 

I love these people and told them yes. I began again, with a higher level of writing thus repeating the cycle. I probably started over six or seven times. It was not a complete restart but redos and new insertions.

I thought I would have learned to do it better but I am on my second book and astonished to admit I am doing the same thing. Possibly I am more anal than I would like. You think?

Friday, December 7, 2012

'I am a Johnny (Jenny) come lately'

Another whine but a contemplative one:
I remember once when I was six or seven my grandma saying, "oh Laura you are so backward." It wasn't meant to hurt. In fact she and I giggled about it. I was born at least a century too late. Things seemed to whizz by me in life. I had chores and responsibilities, quite a few I suppose. Perhaps that is what kept me from viewing life with any kind of piercing perspective. I saw it more as from a seat in a movie theater in the 1930's.

An example of my social ineptness: when I was a seventeen year old freshman at Michigan State I was housed in the oldest dorm on campus formerly occupied by men. Our dorm was still being built and our current dorm would soon be razed.

No one told us this had been a men's dorm and I loved the low bowls on the bathroom walls for wetting  my hair as I set it. I am short and they were a perfect height.  About the second or third week  one of the residents spread the news these bowls were urinals. Most of the girls living there swore they had known that the minute they laid eyes on them. I said nothing knowing. I had not onlycome near them, I had used them. How could I have not have know too? I groaned; why do dumb bunnie things happen to me all the time? When will I learn life and what its all about like my roommates?

Well lets get back to backward Laura. I finally wrote a book and most of my friends have died, gotten alzheimers, or have gently removed themselves from life's main street. Well, but here I am, I caught up at long last. I need to tell this to someone !  

Monday, December 3, 2012

Blog finally started 12/02/2012
My heading is whine:
Okay so a few days ago I got my dream. I, with total help from my son put my book on Nook and Kindle. It was pretty emotional and draining so it wasn't until the next day that I found the misspelled word, then a day or two later a friend of my son said she thought I didn't have the right information on the flap and explained why.  It was like a light bulb turned on. Of course she was correct. Got that corrected last night. Thing is, I gotta forgive myself for those two items and others if they show up.
I mean what is is. Or in this case what was was.

Okay got that off my mind. Here's another thing. My son decides Mom needs a blog. (Mmmm that's  probably something I won't be getting into dear but thanks.)

 "Listen Mom, you need a name for it."  I pretty sure I won't need a blog. My god, I'm probably turning red from saying it.  "It" being blog of course. "Mom, what I'm saying is its already set up." WHAT!

Gee look at all I wrote. And I kinda enjoyed it. Now if someone adds something well life just keeps asking you to join doesn't it?