The Writer’s Life Waltz Again

12. February 2007 · Comments Off on The Writer’s Life Waltz Again · Categories: Domestic, Fun and Games, General, Home Front, The Funny

Oh, the blogging has been light this last week, since I was trapped in the snares of literary endeavor. That is, pounding out chapter 12 of the new book. Some of the chapters come easily, as if they were already written down in my head, and some of them are hauled out inch by inch and word by word. Last week was one of the �hauled out inch by inch� weeks, but the week before I knocked out three chapters. Eh� go figure. I also had a couple of hours to work on Friday at the part-time secretarial-admin job, that between a weekly shift at the radio station, my retiree pension, and the very-slightly-more than paltry income from blogging allows me to stay at home and slave over a hot computer writing this century�s answer to �Gone With the Wind�.

So I am completely uninterested in the hot-news-item do jour, the pitiful life and sad demise of whats-er-fern (Ok, so her and Princess Di- first time tragedy, second time farce, and all that? Are we sure that the late and extravagantly mourned Ms A.N. Smith was not actually some animatronic creation devised by the tabloid industrial complex in order to generate the maximum quantity of tawdry headlines? I mean, inerrantly choosing the maximum tackiest of life choices at every possible opportunity� that goes beyond a gift: that argues a fiendish degree of forethought and planning. Oh, well, at least there is no breath of a whisper that she got it off with anyone really, really important in politics. Yet, anyway. Where was I� oh, yes� creation of semi-competent pop literature. Back on track, sorry for the diversion.)

I did briefly slip the shackles of duty yesterday: my sister Pippy had sent my daughter and I both gift cards for Borders Books, and so we popped down to spend a semi-blissful afternoon picking out the books that we wanted. Blondie went for an illustrated Terry Pratchett, but I had resolved to spend the gift card on some books that I could use for �the book�� ones that I didn�t have to keep returning to the library! I already possessed a good number of books that I needed for the writing of �Truckee�s Trail�, but in writing �Adelsverein� I am starting from scratch, and discovering that there exists a ton of excellent and thoroughly researched non-fiction about the German settlements. Either I can check it out from the library and keep it for about a month and a half at a stretch with renewals, or buy the stuff that I know I will need for longer.

And this book is going to be longer. I�ve already mapped out thirty chapters, and they have a wicked way of expanding, as interesting happenings and characters beg for more attention. Forty years worth of events in the Texas Hill country has an insidious way of becoming totally fascinating. Not to mention the people, of course. I write sometimes with a book open on my lap, to refresh my memory about places, descriptions, events and people. This is our history, and those who came before us; I need to get it all right. How it looked, tasted, smelled, what people in that time would have thought and felt and seen. Details count. I put myself in that place, with a book in my lap, and it all comes clear.

Oh, yes, the people: both the real ones, and the ones that I have totally just� you know� like made up? They take on life of their own, which is exhilarating and kind of scary at the same time. It�s easy and at the same time hard to write about them. For instance: in the next couple of weeks I will have to write about the deaths of three very appealing characters� one of whom is a fairly major hero. Sorry, it just has to be, for such sad events drive the plot, and it has always been so, from the instant that I conceived the whole story arc. (And it really was in an instant. I read something in one of the books� and just knew instantly that that was something which had to be a part of it story. This has happened, over and over. Really.) But still, it will be hard to write about. I was in tears for one whole afternoon, writing about a character in an early chapter who was fairly dispensable and barely seen anyway.

About the only harder thing to do will be about half a chapter on the heroine�s wedding night; something tender and erotic and a bit funny. Knowing that most women of the era were kept in a total state of ignorance about what the marriage bed involved, and that most men had a fairly detailed idea� and that a lot of married women of the era adored their husbands with desperate and operatic devotion (Queen Victoria herself, exhibit 1)� well, really, that argues that a fair number of Victorian-era bridegrooms must have done some fairly effective sex-education, at speed and on the fly, as it were. Otherwise, I presume their wives would have been (a) traumatized incredibly, and (b) loathed their so-called helpmates to really unparalleled degree. I am fairly sure that good properly married Victorians really had about as much fun in bed as any of the rest of us� they just didn�t go on about all the details as much. This proper reticence just makes it harder for the rest of us. I don�t mind, really.

Blondie says she will loan me some of her bodice-ripping romances, in order that I should get into the proper spirit. Yeough; if they dictate that I should have to write a sentence like �she grasped his throbbing man-root and guided it into her turgid flesh� I am so going to put my head in the oven. (For about 15 minutes)

It is an electric oven anyway, but you get the general idea.

Speaking of Planes…

11. February 2007 · Comments Off on Speaking of Planes… · Categories: Domestic, General, My Head Hurts, Politics, Rant

I am glad to know that all of the federal income taxes I pay for an entire year won’t even cover the cost of one hour’s flight time in a C-32 – the plane that Nancy Pelosi feels that she needs. Just think, I can pay taxes for half of my working career knowing that I have covered the expenses for one round trip flight from Washington to San Francisco. Of course, there will be a reimbursement (at coach rate) for friends and family. Undoubtedly coach rate will have been established by reference to a red-eye flight booked several months in advance. Wouldn’t a more fair way be to calculate the ticket cost by amortizing the amount of paying passengers over the total cost of the flight? Hell, they’re all rich anyway.

It makes me sick.

Anatomy of a Rotten Day Part Deux

05. February 2007 · Comments Off on Anatomy of a Rotten Day Part Deux · Categories: Allied Treachery, Domestic, Good God, Memoir, sarcasm, The Funny

So this one time at Camp Pendelton, there was a Marine in my section and he had a bad day.(Found out that his wife had been sleeping with his best friend and she took the kids and split.)
Our wise SNCO called all of us NCOs into his office and said , “We needed to help this Marine out and make sure he does not hurt himself.”
So three of us were volun-told to get over to his house ASAP and take away and hide all of the things that he could hurt himself with (just in case).
I drew the short straw and got the knives, so I took note of all the sharpest and most lethal and packed them up to go to the armory. Then I hid the rest in plain sight.

Long story short he didn’t hurt himself… and he never found the knives I had hidden in plain view. He got out of the military, moved and never found them.

So I guess the moral is*if there is one*you’re not having a really shitty day—

unless I show up and hide your flatware!

Literary Distraction

27. January 2007 · Comments Off on Literary Distraction · Categories: Domestic, General, Literary Good Stuff, Old West

As promised, a snipped from my current obsession, which is growing by leaps and bounds. As reader Andrew Brooks suggested “Rather then bemoan two novels of the Germans in the Texas hill country, let them rip and just think of it as TheChronicles of Barsetshire, but with cypress trees!”

From the epic tenatively known as “Adelsverein”, this is Chapter 8, “The Home Place”

More »

The Writers Life Waltz

27. January 2007 · Comments Off on The Writers Life Waltz · Categories: Domestic, General, Literary Good Stuff, Memoir, Pajama Game, World

It’s been kind of a frenetic waltz this week… which is a round-about way of explaining why I didn’t write much original stuff this week. I just got obsessed with the new book; yeah, this one has taken hold, and when I’m on a roll, I’m on a roll, and nothing else seems quite real, or very important.

See, the first book… well, it was actually the second book, if you count the memoir which you really can’t because that was all basically little scraps of reminiscence stitched together… the first book was pretty easy to write. I sat down and wrote the first draft in a pell-mell rush, all over the space of about two months. The plot was pretty much already there, from start to finish; being based upon real people and real events has the effect of handing me the hardest part on a silver platter already. All I had to do was flesh them out a little, do a little guessing as to how they might have related to each other, come up with some amusing conversation, and a lot of description… hey presto, there you go. 120,000 well-polished and carefully chosen words. As a celebrated wit whose name I can’t remember at the moment was supposed to have said, “It’s easy, just open a vein, and let it flow.”

It actually was easy, because I was able to think about them for a long time, before I actually buckled down and did the writing…. For me, that’s what I need to do about half the time; to work out in my head what needs to happen, and how to go about making it happen. Sometimes I need to bounce ideas off other people: believe me, that kind of feedback is above price. It’s were the best ideas develop. And sometimes the magic is happening. I sit down at the computer and stuff just happens. I cope up for air, and there’s half a chapter written, and it’s pure gold, and it’s already four in the afternoon, and where the hell did the time go?
Anyway, the last book was something I lived with for a long time, before I actually buckled down and put it all on paper.

(It’s still in front of a publisher, by the way … and there are two more I will submit it to, in case of rejection. (Have to wait and do it sequentially, these people are anal about simultaneous submissions!) As my writer friend on the West Coast says, trying to find a publisher for a novel is kind of like trying to find adoptive parents for a minority Down ’s syndrome child: they are out there, but it takes a bit of looking.)

The new book; now, the one about the German colonies in the Texas Hill Country? I have built the scaffolding of plot and character for that from scratch… although there are some real people in it, some of who are very interesting people in their own right and who will take over, if I don’t keep a firm grip on them… (You… sit down, and behave, this story is not about you!)
What is really curious to me is how many of the fictional people, and the plot events just seemed to spring up from something I read in the course of doing research. A sentence here, a paragraph there, even just a single name… and a whole character is launched, obstreperous, amusing, and fully alive to me. There were incidents and events that I just kept circling back around towards, without knowing quite why: I just had the sense that they would have something important to do with the story. I had to set them aside like pieces for a mosaic, and figure out how to fit them all together later. There are also some characters who start out in the plot as a sort of extra, with one or two lines, but one way and another they turn out to be a little more important and before you know it, there is a fully functional and almost essential sub-plot… when all I had really needed was… you know, like two lines! It may take a lot longer to work through the first draft, then sit down and expand, edit and polish to a high shine. I’m guessing six months, at least, especially if I have to take (bleah) more paid outside work!

At this rate of proliferation, there just might be two books in this epic: the first one to cover the immigration, the building of the settlements, and the peace treaty with the Comanche, and the second to cover the Civil War and aftermath. There is no end of incident to cover, not to mention operatic levels of drama, murder, revenge, stolen children, madness, true love, sudden death… all this and civil war, too. And maybe a cattle stampede, just to vary the program. Just by way of a tease, I think I shall post a sample chapter…. (Suggestions and feedback are welcome, always. And any introductions to a literary agent will be extremely welcome, being that the big publishers are closed to me, unless I have one… and they are even harder to find!)

Later: Entry deleted and re-entered, in order to allow comments. Something about punctuation in the title often screws these things us. Don’t know why – Sgt. Mom)

Global Warming???

16. January 2007 · Comments Off on Global Warming??? · Categories: Critters, Domestic, General, Pajama Game

As best I know, Al Gore has not come to San Antonio lately to bang on about global warming; this winter ice storm is just one of the usual South Texas winter things, only colder, icier and more of an inconvenience than usual. Ice, freezing rain, bitter north wind; all the elevated highways and overpasses closed, school classes cancelled, and as many people as possible being urged to stay home. As Blondie lamented this morning to the Lesser Weevil:
“Ya suppose if we gave you the leash, you could just walk yourself?”

It’s a good thing that I still have all of my serious winter gear from when we lived in Utah. At the rate I wear my winter parka, insulated boots, gloves and other necessary winter stuff, they will last me the rest of my natural life, since they only get good use maybe three or four days of the year. This being one of them: our version of a snow day. Residents of northern tier states are laughing their asses off, though. By their standards, this is a good winter day. Only the ice all over the roads is cause for pause. I’ve seen these folks here drive on wet streets, the last thing they need is black ice. I am not keen on being anywhere in the vicinity when Bubbah from the West Side zips up to the big intersection at Thousand Oaks and Perrin-Beitel in his monster SUV, slams on the brakes as he hits a patch of ice and spins all the way down to the Post Office, scattering other cars before him like ninepins before a 3,000 pound bowling ball. I can drive on ice, and in snow, I just have no faith in anyone else on the roads around here being able to do so. After all, they only have to do so about once every five years, and that is just not enough to keep those skills current.

At least we had plenty of warning about this cold front; so all the tender plants are in the garage, or under cover on the back porch; so far the only potted plant badly affected is Blondie’s painted coleus… which may or may not make it. I just don’t think it is any more sheltered in the garage than it is on the back porch.

We walked up the hill with the dogs at about midmorning: treacherous patches of ice in odd places on driveways and on the sidewalks. Spike the toy shi-tzu is always invigorated by cold; must be all that fur. She bounded ahead, displaying every evidence of keen enjoyment. Sometimes I amuse myself by picturing a team of six or eight little dogs like her, all hitched to a miniature sled and dragging it through the Arctic snow. Even if it is a breed which is supposed to be pampered lap-dogs all, I suspect that Spike and her tiny kind actually have dreams of glory, and heroic deeds. Today she skidded on a couple of patches of ice, and did not venture onto a lawn more than once. The trees, the lawns and parked cars are all glazed over with a layer of ice, crackling underfoot as if you are wading through cornflakes. The scattering of trees which still have leaves are coated also; the north wind rattles the leaves and branches like bamboo castanets. We met one of our neighbors, grimly scraping ice off his windshield with a credit card, and we both tried to remember how far down in our respective glove-boxes are buried the plastic ice scrapers.

Blondie was to start classes today; something she was looking forward to after three weeks of being bored out of her mind at home, but classes at most schools today are cancelled. Practically every elevated overpass and freeway ramp is closed, so even if she did still have classes, it would take at least half the day to get across town to them. Public events and lectures have also been cancelled or postponed, and a couple of corporations and city offices are either closed, or ask only essential employees to come to work. No, this is a day to stay home, and stay warm, and work from home. My sometime boss, the real estate broker doesn’t even want me to venture out: the ice is even worse in his neighborhood. And most unusual for here, it looks to carry on for more than one day. It’s rare for a winter storm to discommode San Antonio for more than one day at a time, but this one looks like going for a record. No word on snow, though. It last snowed seriously here about twenty years ago, and people are still talking about it as if it were a blizzard that left fifteen-foot deep drifts.

I’ll flog away on the next book, and Blondie is going to do some loaves of bread: all you can do on a day like this! That is, as soon as we melt the ice around the door lock to Blondie’s car. Global warming, indeed.

Christmas Eve Surprise

24. December 2006 · Comments Off on Christmas Eve Surprise · Categories: Domestic, Eat, Drink and be Merry, General, Memoir, Pajama Game

Some few Christmases ago, when Blondie was still stationed at Camp Pendleton, and my personal economics allowed me to fly out to California to spend the holiday at Mom and Dads’ house, my daughter and youngest brother conceived a grand scheme to give them a large color TV for Christmas.

Blondie and Sander also wanted to surprise them, and a huge box under the Christmas tree, no matter how cunningly wrapped, just would not deliver the same element of surprise… no, my daughter and my little brother had worked out a cunning plan to remove the old television, which had been inherited from Granny Dodo’s estate, install the new one, and gift-wrap the remote in a little box which would be in Mom’s Christmas stocking. They could pull this off because the television normally resided on a shelf of its own in a wall of books and cupboards, with a pair of louvered shutters closed over the screen. It was one of Mom’s enduring standards about television; that it be out of sight when not actually being watched, if not out of the living room entirely.

Such was the plan, but for the maximum surprise to be achieved, several challenges had to be worked out: the installation would have to be done after we were all done watching television on Christmas Eve, and Mom and Dad would have to be out of the house. The old TV would need to be unhooked from the antenna and VCR, and the new one put into its place, and all the evidence removed. Blondie and Sander estimated they would need at least twenty minutes. The optimal time to perform this substitution would be while everyone was at midnight candle-light service, at a church in Escondido, about half an hours’ drive away. As soon as they were out of the way, Blondie and Sander would set it all up and follow the rest of us in his car; hopefully not missing too much of the service. After all, this was one of the two official times per year when Dad actually set foot in church.

On some pretext, Blondie and Sander would lag behind, while all the rest of us; Mom and Dad and I, Pippy and her husband and the children, and JP and I would head down the hill to church service in several cars. And Blondie had sworn me to secrecy; my part in the plot was to make sure that Mom and Dad left the house on time. The new television was outside in the back of Sanders’ car, having been hidden at a neighbors’ house… oh, yeah, everyone was in on this, except for Mom and Dad, and possibly the pastor and church council.

At about twenty to eleven, Mom began reminding us all to change into something suitable for the midnight service. Dad turned off the television and closed the shutter doors, an event we all noted with covert interest, before Blondie and I went to the guest room to change. Blondie was going to wear her dress uniform… this always went over well with Mom’s friends at church, who were heavily into competition on the grandchild front. And her excuse for lagging behind would be an inability to locate one of her dress pumps, which she had carefully hidden under the bed.

So, everyone was ready but Blondie, with one shoe in her hand and making a pretense of frazzlement as she looked for the other, Dad was looking at his watch, Pip and her husband had rounded up the children, and were herding them towards their vehicle out in the driveway. In accordance with the agreed-upon plan, I put on a bit of a frazzled look myself (really, I am a better actress than most people give me credit for) and announced that Blondie can’t find her shoe, and that we should leave now. Sander chimed in on cue: he would stay and help her look, and catch up with us in his car.
“Don’t you have another pair of shoes you can wear?” Mom asks.
“No, I only brought the one set of dress pumps,” Blondie answered. No one even suggested that she borrow a pair; for a start, she wears a size nine and a half.
“It must be in the guest room,” Dad said determinedly, “Five minutes, we’ll take everything apart and look for it.” He and Mom looked like they were about to drop everything and look for the damned shoe. It meant a lot to them to have Blondie show up in uniform.
“Give us another minute, we didn’t look under the bed.” Blondie and I retreated to the bedroom and close the door.
“You’re got to get them out of there!” Blondie hissed at me.
“Give me a minute… OK, got it.” Of course… how devious. Devious, but effective.” I put on my coat, and picked up my purse. Down the hall, Mom was fussing around with her own coat and scarf.
“Did Blondie find her shoe?” she asked, and I whispered, conspiratorially
“It’s not lost, it’s just an excuse for the two of them to stay behind and set up a surprise present for Dad. Forget about the shoe; just get Dad out of here.”
I found Dad pacing up and down in the solarium
“Did you find it?” he asked, and I lowered my voice again,
“It’s just a ruse, so Blondie and Sander can stay behind and bring in Mom’s surprise Christmas present… just get her out of here, so they can get to work.”
Dad looked amused; he has always liked this sort of intrigue and with a minimum of fuss, they both headed for the car, with me trailing after and congratulating myself on my efficiency and guile.

And so it went according to plan… all except for Sander and Blondie getting to church after service had started, not knowing that they had locked the door into the sanctuary because of the late hour, and having to pound on the doors until the ushers let them in. The next morning, Mom unwrapped her first gift, and looked at the new TV remote with great bewilderment. Under all our expectant eyes Sander opened the doors to the TV cabinet with a great flourish… and Mom and Dad were both very, very surprised.

Merry Christmas… May all your surprises be the nice ones!!

Spam, Spam, Spam Spam

24. December 2006 · Comments Off on Spam, Spam, Spam Spam · Categories: Domestic, General, Rant, Site News

When Timmer upgraded the site to a newer version of Word Press, he also installed the Akismet spam-killing option, which keeps a running tally of spam comments intercepted and deleted. This is actually kind of amusing, because at current rates of accumulation, I believe we will have deleted 100,000 individual spam comments by New Years’ Day… none of which have actually posted.

I scroll through the pages of spam occasionally— like when there is only a hundred or so—just to make sure that there are no legitimate comments stranded there, and a depressing chore that is, too. Multiple identical, ungrammatical or just plain gibberish comments, with a link to a website embedded somewhere out the wilds of the internet.
Lots of kinky sexual practices, porn that to judge from the title line tends toward the disgusting side of the scale, boatloads of dubious drugs, a scattering of payday loan sites, insurance, and of late, a couple of sites that push ready-made term papers. A depressing collection of topics, and even more depressing is that it was probably less trouble for the originators to send it all out than it is for me to delete it all.

100,000 of these, all dumped on one site… none of which were actually posted. I presume there must be blogs somewhere out there with an unwary or careless administrator, where such comments do get posted and stay up, and presumably serve as free advertising, but probably not many. I suppose the spam-scum sending out this huge quantity of comments must get one or two links somewhere, and that must make it all worth while. But it’s kind of depressing… it’s the marketing equivalent of carpeting an entire town with spray-paint graffiti over every imaginable surface; walls, windows, other billboards, fences and retaining walls, all advertising some nasty sort of pawn-pornshop on the bad side of town. Even if all of it is swiftly and magically scrubbed away, a dozen times a day, I still resent the effort of having to do it. I loath everyone involved: the spammers who repeat this pointless exercise several hundred times daily, and doing it very badly, their disgusting clients with their rip-off business plan, and their schlubby loser clients. I hope they all get disgusting diseases, that their servers crash, and their pets all bite them. Bah, humbug, spam-scum… I wish a Merry Christmas for everyone else in the world but you.

So, taking bets on when we will get the magic 100,000; when will we cross the magic threshold?

Bad, Bad Toys

20. December 2006 · Comments Off on Bad, Bad Toys · Categories: Ain't That America?, Domestic, Fun and Games, General, Pajama Game

Ran across this little account of the Very Worst Toys Ever, and began to chortle…. Not so much at the toys themselves, although JP, and Pippy and I were actually given at least one of the deadly worst and a couple of the others mentioned in the comments.

We, of course, emerged un-maimed, although Dad probably regrets to this day that he didn’t give either one of us the atomic energy lab. Probably couldn’t afford it, as he was only a poor graduate student on the GI bill, round and about then. We did have loving and generous grandparents, though; how we didn’t ever get BB rifles like all the other neighborhood kids is a mystery. Mom probably put her foot down about that, believing that yes, you could put out an eye with them. Well, so could you with a “wrist rocket”. We had a pair of them, a sort of bent-metal sling-shot with a bottom end that braced against your wrist so that you could sling a bit of gravel at practically ballistic speed. But they weren’t toys- we had them to chase the blue jays away from the house where they tormented the cats and dogs unmercifully. As far as I know, Dad was the only one of us who ever actually hit a blue-jay with a wrist-rocket impelled missile. Square in the butt, actually. It let out an enormous squawk and vacated the premises henceforth and forthwith and at a good speed.

We did have a variant of the creepy-crawler toy, with the heater that heated up a pair of metal moulds that (IIRC) made little GI Joe figures and their various little accoutrements. Just open the little bottles of black and brown and OD green rubber compound goop, pour into the molds, and bake until done. It did heat up quite hot, and the baking rubber smelt pretty vile. Still, no dangerous adventures to report, no animals ever ingested the little marble-super-balls… but the “clackers” rather lost their charm after some painful bruises. Picture a pair of billiard-sized balls, on either end of a length of cord, with a finger-hold in the middle. The object was to get them going, “clacking” them against each other while hanging from your hand, and then get them going so fast that they would rebound and “clack” against each other above your hand. Eh… it was the novelty toy in about 1966… for as long as it took for kids to figure out that the damned things hurt.

Other bad, bad toys? Definitely the water-rocket. I clearly remember watching Dad and JP launch them from the back yard of the White Cottage, which would put it squarely in the early 60ies, the Golden Age of Really, Really Dangerous Toys. It was bulbous blue plastic rocket; there may have been a pair of them. They flew on an interesting combination of (I think!) baking soda, vinegar, water from a garden hose screwed into the launcher mechanism, and some kind of pressure pump-thingus. It was a wet and messy business, preparing for flight, but they zoomed up to a thrilling height from the ground when released from the launcher with considerable force.

Who needed lawn darts to maim each other with, when you had rocket power? Although to be fair, I don’t think we had nearly as much thrilling fun with them, as we did when Dad was overseeing the launching. And Dad brought us enough in the way of dangerous toys; it was his notion to snake-proof us at an early age, by having us handle the not-so-dangerous sorts. And Dad was the one who gave us an enormous magnifying glass and showed us how to focus the suns’ rays with it, so that we could set stuff on fire. And he brought home dry ice from the lab; heaps of fun, throwing a great lump of it into the baby’s wading pool, and enjoying the bubbling, and the billows of white vapor. That was nearly as much good clean fun as the insulated flask of liquid hydrogen, and dipping leaves and rose petals into it for a moment… then dropping them on the tile kitchen counter where they would shatter like glass.

Grannie Jessie was notoriously blasé about toy hazards, but even Grannie Dodie, who wasn’t, still let us play with Dad’s classic old Erector set, which included enough small nuts and screws to provide a choking hazard to an entire elementary school… and the crown jewel, a small electric motor. Said motor was a good three or four decades old when we played with it, and even to my eyes looked a little… I don’t know… frayed? Insulation cracked… connections not quite up to par? We never managed to spindle, shock, or mutilate with it, so perhaps it wasn’t quite so child-unsafe as I remember it. Oh, yeah dangerous toys – bicycles without helmets, large horses, and go-carts on steep hillside trails, rope swings in tall trees.
Oddly enough, we survived. Even without the toy nuclear lab. Add your own accounts of Bad, Bad Toys. Especially if they were received as Christmas presents.

(Don’t drool, people… Dad’s old Erector set survived our childhood, still in the original case, but it was in their garage when the house burned to the ground, four years ago.)

The 40 Most Obnoxious Quotes of 2006

18. December 2006 · Comments Off on The 40 Most Obnoxious Quotes of 2006 · Categories: Domestic, Politics, Rant

By John Hawkins at Right Wing News.

Heinlein was right, when simple civility begins to break down, we’re in for a long dark age.  I’m going to make sure Boyo can fight well and shoot straight before he leaves my house.

Anatomy of a Rotten Day

15. December 2006 · Comments Off on Anatomy of a Rotten Day · Categories: Ain't That America?, Domestic, General, Pajama Game

And I mean a day that sucked so badly it pulled small objects nearby into itself, a day that started off setting a new record for suckage, a day that spread blight, disaster and discouragement in every possible direction, even to the gingerbread cookies that Blondie attempted this afternoon, following a recipe from the pages of “Joy of Cooking” which defiantly should have stayed there and never seen the light of day. It’s the Gingerbread Man recipe on p 712 of the 1970s edition, BTW. Can’t miss them… tastes like ginger and molasses playdough, and look most unfortunately like dog turds. And we know dog turds, these days, for we are the one set of responsible pet owners on our street who do, in fact, whip out the approved plastic bags… no matter what that rude woman on the corner with her herd of nasty-tempered rat-dogs called after us, yesterday.

Oh, yeah, ginger-flavored dog turd balls, that’s for sure what we’re going to give to our neighbors for Christmas. The ones that don’t speak to us will probably never not speak to us again, and the ones that we do speak to will be looking after us strangely and discretely spitting out the bite they were polite enough to take into a paper napkin.

Does anyone actually ever eat the Christmas cookies from neighbors, anyway? I think they just pass them on to someone else. Like fruitcakes.

My computer has been glitching, over the last couple of says, abruptly terminating the internet connection, and sending me repeated pop-ups for things that I am not interested in, and so yesterday I burned several hours of writing time running the usual sort of diagnostics, with the result that this morning, absolutely the third thing I tried to do on line froze it up entirely: there was the desktop, and my documents and everything…less my accustomed cookies and log-ins…and it remained frozen. So, first thing of the day, a day dedicated to writing and a chapter of the new book which I had been thinking about all night, and planning to pick up where I had left off yesterday…and I can’t. All my notes, and the very complicated excel spread-sheet I spent hours on this week, plotting out the various events and characters…all locked up, because of course I haven’t copied them over to disc because they are not finished yet.

My computer genius friend says he can’t get to it until tonight, but if we meet his daughter at a place in our neighborhood that she is going to show to a potential buyer, she’ll take the computer to his place, and he’ll work on it after work tonight. We spend some time, locating the place, and waiting for the daughter. She tells us that there has been a sudden rash of malicious worms and Trojans, in the last couple of days… his own website crashed and a lot of his clients are infested up the wazoo with them. He may just have to rescue my documents, wipe the hard drive and start all over.

I have always thought that the jerks who write and set loose malicious stuff like that should be stripped naked, smeared with honey and staked out over a fire-ant nest. Alive. The prospect of perhaps having to re-write what I have so far (not all of it, because a friend who is away for the holiday had the first chapter sent to him as an attachment and he may have it still, but I won’t know until he is back after the holidays!) or even interrupting me when I am in the throes of creating something really, really terrific…and putting a crimp into earning my living writing makes me really, really furious. Yeah, I’ll go for the fire ants nest, but I’d like do to this malicious little bastard (who is probably chortling to himself in a nasty cold-water walkup in Russia or the Philippines or wherever these shits congregate) what the Comanche used to do to their prisoners. (Wasn’t pleasant, BTW. Involved eye-gouging, amputation of marital tackle, hot coals, and stakes.)

I finally finished hemming a length of fabric for a scarf for Blondie, and adorning each corner with an elaborate tassel of beads, all very headachy work, done under bright light with very tiny glass beads. I’ve been putting off finishing it for days, finally did so today, and when she took it back to her room this afternoon, one of the tassels caught on the baby-gate we use to keep the dogs our of her end of the house… and ripped it all loose. Beads all over. When I finally finished it, it stayed finished for a whole… I dunno, fifteen minutes?!!!

I can’t pay a bill that I have been promising I’ll pay today because I haven’t been paid… and I worked three hours and a half, clipping certain real estate ads out of the newspaper, trying to clip them so they could be readable, even if the particular section was on two sides of the same sheet of newsprint. I have a headache from this, and my fingers are all over newsprint and dust. Again, I won’t be paid for this until next week sometime.

I am waiting for the book I have already finished to connect with the publishing world; which is moribund until after Christmas, or even New Years, even. I had the mad notion to do a proposal for the new book, and include it as a two-fer, and I also wanted to try and do my Christmas card letter today… but can’t because my computer is frelled, all because some malicious little twerp decided to stick it to the man.

And we can’t afford to go to my parents for Christmas, when everyone else will be there, and it’s a week before Christmas, and we are juggling time and commitments and money. Candidly, I kind of wish Christmas was over already.

Oh, yeah, and some kids were running around the neighborhood vandalizing cars. And I have to write this on Blondie’s laptop, which has a keyboard and the weird little tracing pad and two buttons instead of a mouse, and everything is in the wrong place…

Bah, humbug… Merry ******Christmas! The person who tries to tell me how it could all be so much worse is getting an internet nuclear wedgie, as soon as I can figure out how to administer it.

Lifestyles of the Struggling Writer

10. December 2006 · Comments Off on Lifestyles of the Struggling Writer · Categories: Ain't That America?, Domestic, General, Working In A Salt Mine...

Last week I nerved myself up to actually call the literary agent who was reviewing the entire manuscript of “To Truckee’s Trail”. He had e-mailed me at the beginning of November that he was savoring every word and would let me know “soon”… but I had already begun to sense what the word would be, when I didn’t hear anything by mid-month.
And the word was, no, he didn’t think he’d be able to “sell” it to one of the big name publishers; although he was very complimentary— it’s a terrifically gripping read, very nice characters, and researched down to the third decimal place— but…

And this is what I have come to think of as the “Big But”; it would be a hard sell, harder than he wanted to dive into. It’s not quite a genre western, definitely not a romance, since the passionate relationship is between two people who have been married for a decade at least, and it’s not the sort of historical novel that seems to sell these days, which as he explained it, is about an unknown aspect of an event or person that people have heard about (Sigmund Freud, the Civil War). He floated the Stephens Party in a couple of casual conversations, and drew an absolute blank every time… which I thought would have been a selling point, but never mind.

No way does this put me back to square one: I’ve been applying to other lit agencies all along; so far, three form rejections which are about what I’d expect, but…

Another “Big But”… a friend of a friend who is a writer himself and coached me through writing up a proper proposal, and sample chapter, etc, is going to put it straight to his publisher. He is not one of the really big names, but he has made a regular living at it for a long while, and moreover is a big fan of my stuff. I’ve tweaked the manuscript again, in response to feedback from knowledgeable readers, and he will review it one more time, and send it in after Christmas. Apparently, nothing happens in the publishing world over Christmas.

Over the last month or so, I sent out a number of proposed articles to various magazines; rewritings of some of my best blog entries, actually. One of them is being considered by a history magazine, and two of them have been rejected…. But with a hand-written note of encouragement from the reviewing editor, expressing profound enjoyment of them, and apologizing because the publication had no budget for free-lancers this quarter.

This represents a step up for my rejection slip collection, actually; yeah, they’re rejection slips, but they are nice rejections, and give evidence that the submission was actually read and considered. It’s all about progress.

I’ve started the next book, too: the one about the German settlements in the Texas Hill Country. Now, that will have positively operatic levels of everything: the wild frontier, lust, cliff-hanging danger and sudden death. I might even put some sex into it, too.

Perfect Home-Made Pizza

01. December 2006 · Comments Off on Perfect Home-Made Pizza · Categories: Domestic, Eat, Drink and be Merry, General

With a great deal of tinkering and experimentation, Blondie and I have worked out a pretty damn good home-made pizza, starting with this lovely crust recipe, taken from a recipe for deep-dish Chicago pizza in Cuisine at Home Issue #53 (p.8)

Combine and proof (let sit until foamy)
¾ cup warm water
1 T sugar
1 pkg or 2 ¼ t dry yeast
2 T olive oil

Blondie usually adds a couple of T’s of chopped fresh or dried herbs to this: cilantro, rosemary, oregano, garlic to the yeast mixture. It gives the crust a certain oomph.

In the bowl of a stand mixer, combine:
2 cups all purpose flour (We use King Arthur bread flour)
1/3 cup yellow cornmeal
2 t kosher salt

Add the yeast mixture and knead on low speed for 10 minutes, or until smooth. Form into a ball and place in a lightly oiled bowl, turning once to cover with oil. Cover with plastic wrap and let rise until doubled, about 1 hour. Punch down, roll into a ball again, return to bowl, cover and let rise again for another hour.

This makes enough dough for two 16-inch thin-crust pizzas or 2 9-10 inch deep-crust pizzas made in an iron skillet. (We have one of those patent pizza pans, with tiny holes drilled through. This would also work on a pizza stone.)The trick is to roll out the dough, and pre-bake for about 10 minutes in a 450 degree oven, on the bottom shelf. The other trick is to cover the baked dough with thin slices of mozzarella cheese (the original deep-dish recipe calls for a layer of very thin sliced deli ham) to keep the crust from getting all soggy. When the baked crust is lightly brown, take it out of the oven, and cover it with the insulating layer of cheese. Then, spread out about a cup of good bottled marinara sauce (Newmans’ is excellent!) over the top of each pizza— not to much, it will overflow, or make the crust soggy. Top with all the various toppings that you favor: thin-sliced onions, mushrooms, cooked crumbled sausage, pepperoni, etc. Don’t pile on too much, this will have to cook through, in a hot oven in a very short time. Top with shredded mozzarella, and sprinkles of whatever extra herbs you may like, but with the herbs in the dough, additions are not necessary. Bake again, in the 450 degree oven until cheese is just lightly melted.

(The dough can also be frozen, and thawed again, if you don’t have a need for two pizzas.)

Custom of the Season: Pt 2

29. November 2006 · Comments Off on Custom of the Season: Pt 2 · Categories: Domestic, Eat, Drink and be Merry, General

Gift giving becomes a hassle when you don’t really know the person very well, and a gift of some sort is obligatory (bosses, co-workers) , or you know them really well but have given them practically everything they want/need on previous occasions (parents and siblings), or they already have everything already (grandparents.)
Books are a good fall-back for me, as far as gifting my nearest and dearest, but an even better all-purpose gift is something to eat, and I don’t mean a plate of rock-hard Christmas cookies or one of those little baskets from Swiss Colony with the triangular little packets of cheese-food that taste like a pair of cruddy gym-socks smell, or one of those lavish and overpriced catalogue numbers. (Although I love Harry & David fruit baskets, ever since we got one at the office one year: oh, yum. The office staff fought viciously over the apples and pears.) I mean a carefully constructed food basket, and no, you do not need Martha Stewarts’ skills…or her pocketbook.

My favorite gift food-basket starts with a cookbook: any cookbook. Those tiny specialty cookbooks about the size of a Beatrix Potter book, the thin paper-bound books that used to be given away by companies, any of the Sunset cookbooks… really, anything that has some nice recipes in it that would appeal to the recipient. You do not want to build a basket around a cookbook of sweets for someone that is a diabetic, or a book of barbequed meats for a vegan. I score cookbooks of this kind at Half Price Books, but any source for literary overruns and overstocks is fine.

Pick a recipe out of the book, mark the recipe with a book mark, or a piece of ribbon… and measure out all the ingredients for it in appropriate containers, carefully labeled and packaged. I have bought little bottles and cellophane bags, and sheets of labels at the Container Store, or hobby shop, or at the local big-box import place. You can also purchase sheets of shrink-wrap, or shrink-wrap bags— the kind that you can use a hair-dryer to shrink over the basket when it is all finished, and excelsior or finely shredded packing materiel at the same place.

Really, you are only limited by your budget; there is nothing to stop you from building a basket around a whole meal— but if perishables are included, either assemble at the last minute, or keep refrigerated. Include in a bottle of wine, or a loaf of bakery bread, if you like, and any fancy accessories you can afford. I have done baskets based on a recipe for tea bread, and adorned it with a wooden spoon or an inexpensive metal whisk. I did a basket for the head of the firm I worked for two Christmases ago with the recipe for this soup and a copy of the book it was taken from. The finished basket was trimmed with a bunch of bay-leaves and whole garlic clove.

It’s not strictly required to stick to items for human consumption, either: I did a basket for some friends moving into a new house in the suburbs, filled with a bird feeder, a pound of bird-seed to fill it, and a little field guide to local birds. I also did a basket for the significant other last year, which included a spa-style shower head, some aromatherapy soaking salts and male-oriented toiletries, and a really nice cotton towel. It’s not even strictly necessary to use a basket, either; just some sort of appropriate container; say, a terracotta pot for a collection of gardening supplies, or one of those big tins for a collection of gourmet popcorns, with a popper and an oven mitt, for instance.

About the baskets, though; this is the embarrassing part. To buy an empty basket at retail price will likely make it the most expensive single element, which is counterproductive to my goal of a high-end one-off gift basket at an affordable price; Neiman-Marcus quality at a Walmart cost. And the best place to find a variety of attractive baskets…(hanging my head and blushing deeply) … is at the thrift store. Goodwill, Salvation Army, even yard sales will do. I usually pay only a dollar or two. They can be washed in mild soap and warm water, or even painted with spray paint, to match the color theme (if any) of the gift. And it’s not like anyone will really be looking at the basket; they’ll be looking at the contents anyway.

So there you are: stuck for a gift for someone you only know casually? Food is always gratefully received: trust me.

Custom of the Season

27. November 2006 · Comments Off on Custom of the Season · Categories: Domestic, Eat, Drink and be Merry, Fun and Games, General, Working In A Salt Mine...

I did, on one single occasion, spend the entire Friday-after-Thanksgiving in the mall and department store. Not because I had a yen for joining the yearly Christmas-shopping exercise in masochism… but because I was working retail that year. I was on terminal leave, and job-hunting in a desultory fashion, and took a temp position in a department store which paid a salary plus commission on sales. (If nothing else, this arrangement will guarantee attentive sales staff… and besides, the employee discount was totally generous.) It was rather fun, at first; If you truly enjoy shopping, and hanging out with other women, and people-watching, who wouldn’t get a kick from hanging around a department store? But the day after Thanksgiving was all that and doing a sort of sales-floor triathlon; we were at top speed all that long day. Not much more than half an hour for lunch, no times when it slowed down long enough that you could sit down in the back room and put up your feet.
Dense crowds in the mall, cars slowly rotating the parking lots looking for that rare species, a parking place, long lines at every cash register, and workdays that stretched out so long that another sales associate lamented that the only place she could shop for Christmas, besides the store we worked in was Walmart, because it was open twenty four hours a day. I had my fill of holiday retail madness after that experience, and truth is, I usually don’t need to shop for Christmas presents during December.

That is because I am one of those tiresomely organized people who shop for Christmas throughout the year. I didn’t start out that way, honestly… it came about because of being overseas for so long. The mail deadline for sending parcels to the States, and getting them there by Christmas was routinely in October, which meant that I had to be done with shopping by the end of September. Sometimes opportunities to shop were limited, which stretched the shopping season out for a couple of months, and bumped back even thinking about what to get everyone to… oh, say early summer. Spring, even. This set the habit for me, of buying things with an eye towards Christmas… especially if they were on sale, whenever I saw them. “OOhhh, that would be perfect for (insert name here)!”, so add it to the collection in the box on the top shelf of the master suite closet. Christmas… it comes every year, just like April 15th. Putting off doing anything about buying gifts or doing the income tax return will not, will not make either of them go away. Trust me on this.

This has the advantage of being extremely easy on the pocketbook… as long as you remember who the heck you bought something for; a disadvantage with a large family. So, all I have to do during December’s retail madness is to take out the box with the gifts bought throughout the year, and wrap them… in the paper that I bought the week after Christmas of last year when it was marked down 70%.
And put up my feet and have another glass of Chablis. You’re welcome – I live to serve.

(next: Sgt. Mom’s specialty gift Christmas baskets)

Run Like The Wind

20. November 2006 · Comments Off on Run Like The Wind · Categories: Critters, Domestic, General, Pajama Game

In the last couple of weeks, I have begun taking both dogs with me for the morning run. This must present a most amusing spectacle; I am certain that people all over the neighborhood are laughing at the spectacle of me, with a fistful of leash in either hand, being dragged at a fast clip by the wildly unmatched pair of Lesser Weevil and Spike. Lesser Weevil is a great rawboned boxer-pit bull mix with a soupcon of retarded thrown in for good measure. Otherwise fairly intelligent and sensitive to a fault, she just occasionally does the most jaw-droppingly bone-headed things such as walking straight into walls, telephone poles, or the deep end of swimming pools. Upon bouncing back, or climbing out, she displays a look of complete surprise and bafflement. She still pulls like a tractor, which gets me an upper-body workout, in addition to the run, and varies her own personal program of exercise by launching herself clear off the ground, leaping and whirling in the air when she is excited. She spends the first three or four blocks being excited, bouncing along with all four feet clear off the ground, leading to speculation that she might be part jack-rabbit as well.

I was told that Spike, as a shih-tzu, and a toy shih-tzu at that, would not cope with the great outdoors very well; she definitely could not handle summer heat, but then neither did Weevil. When I first began taking Spike out for walks on the weekends, I usually had to carry her for at least half the distance. Once the cool fronts moved in, Spike was revived and invigorated; she bounds along tirelessly with her nose up, tail curled proudly over her back, ears flapping madly and her fur blown back in the wind of her passage. (Spikie! Run Spikie, run like the wind!!) She must gallop at top speed to keep up with Weevil, but she never seems to tire now, and both of them are straining ahead, pulling their leashes straight out in front of me… especially when they see someone or something that interests them. Today it was a squirrel, which we surprised as we ran past a pile of yard clippings put out for the trash. The squirrel flashed out in front of us, not ten feet away, and both the dogs lunged after it with the greatest enthusiasm imaginable. I had a good grip on the leashes, though; and the squirrel leaped up onto a fence and then discovered there was another large dog in the backyard on the other side, and had to do that “walking on the edge” thing while all the dogs went nuts in chorus.

They are madly enthusiastic about people; any people, large or small. They are about the two most social dogs I have ever had anything to do with; to them, everyone they meet when we are out and about are their dearest friends in all the world… which wouldn’t bode well for being watchdogs, except that Spike has the expected small-dog propensity for barking at any little noise. And Lesser Weevil at least looks intimidating, so I do have some faint hope that she could bring herself to throw herself on an intruder… even if it would be only to slobber affectionately.

The three older cats: Morgie, Henry and Arthur are still very stand-offish, although it is not for lack of trying from Spike. She and Percival are very affectionate and playful with each other, probably because Percival is the only beast in the house smaller than Spike herself. She is a year old, now, and seems to have hit her full growth at about ten pounds, every bit of it muscled and full of energy. She chases Percival under the chairs, pins him down and nips as his ears, and he bats at her with all four paws, and when he feels like it, takes over her dog-bed. None of the cats want anything to do with Weevil, though; she is just too big. She was entirely flummoxed one morning, when I was talking to a neighbor, and the neighbor’s cat sauntered up fearlessly. I had a both hands on the leash, and a length of it wrapped around my knuckles, but all the cat did was sniff at her, and touch muzzle to hers… much to Weevil’s bafflement. What? Aren’t you going to run, so I can chase you? Whassup with that???!

“She was raised with dogs” Explained the neighbor, but Weevil still looked puzzled. I don’t think any of my current cats will adjust and look on poor Weevil as a good buddy and playmate. Détente is probably the best that can be hoped for, until Weevil gets over the urge to chase fast-moving objects. Which she probably won’t, unless she figures out that Blondie deliberately polishes the floor to a high sheen, just for the fun of watching Weevil and Spike skid and slide on it, while chasing a ball or yarn-bone. We did dress them for Halloween, just to be sadistic: I’ll post a picture as soon as we have that capability again!

Zen and the Hopeful Writer

17. November 2006 · Comments Off on Zen and the Hopeful Writer · Categories: Domestic, General, History, Old West, Pajama Game

Still waiting to hear from an agent/publisher/deus-ex-machina/whatever, regarding the book. Another couple of weeks of this, and my fingernails will be chewed off, all the way up to my elbows. All my friends counsel patience, all but one, who recommends zen detachment… and starting on another book. I’ve been waking up in the middle of the night, thinking on this. What on earth could I write about? What is out there that would grab me, and an audience half as thoroughly as the greatest emigrant trail epic that no one has ever heard anything about?  It made a nice change from worrying about paying the necessary bills on a combination of a pension, two part-time jobs and some blogging-for-dollars.  I loved the experience of writing that story; it took two months and a bit, going full-tilt every day that I could spend at the computer. I had set myself a target of 3,000 words, or half of a chapter a day. I already had a chapter outline, a handful of characters, the plot. all worked out; just put in the little bits, the conversation and incident, and colorful bits of description. Piece of cake.  I’ve read how hard it is to work at home, how easily distractable it can be, that everything gets in the way, and …. Oh, Blondie just asked me to mend a hole in one of her tee-shirts… where was I? Yes, things conspire to keep you fiddling around with other things, rather than buckling down to work.

Anyway, I finished it, put it around for some friends to read, did some re-writes as I found more and better background information,  took stock of various questions and critiques, rewrote it again, filled out some of the incidents, characters and relationships… and at the every end of it, I fiddled around for days on the last little rewrite. Because after that last page, that last paragraph, it would be finished. I would be done with John and Elizabeth, with Captain Stephens and his faithful Dog, the fearless little Eddie, his mother Isabella  and his baby sister… all of them. Their adventure would be over, and so would mine. I had wanted to write about them so badly that I took being laid off with the greatest good will. I’ve been reluctant to even consider full-time employment again, because… to be honest, I don’t want to think about myself as anything but a writer. I don’t really want to be doing anything but writing. I’ve spent all of my adult life spent  working in  broadcasting, and the military, or in various pink-collar administrative and office jobs because it paid, and I was mostly good at it, if not particularly interested. I kept the scribbling on the side as a private amusement, but this year it just came to a head. I want to do what it pleases me to do, and that is just that.  My mid-life crisis, as it were. My friend the zen-master sternly advises against thinking of money or acclaim… just write. You are, therefore you write… but having finished one enormously compelling story… what to do, what to do? Writing “Truckee’s Trail”  was in a weird way, rather addictive, sort of what heroin must be like. (Blondie, doing a Bette-Davis sized eye-roll: “Mom, you’ve never done heroin!).

The new book… nineteenth century America still draws me. A historical novel, then; I seem to have a knack for it, anyway. Where we Americans came from, an experience which shaped and I am convinced goes on shaping us; the frontier, of course. But something off-beat, something mostly unknown to a wider audience… something unexpected. It all came together unexpectedly as I was emailing the “zen-master”, lamenting the fact that I didn’t know anything of where I stand as far as the agent is concerned; the perfect next writing project. The Texas frontier this time and the German settlers who came and founded Fredericksburg and New Braunfels. It has everything: very cultured, forward-thinking Europeans, unhappy with the political situation after 1848… one of their leaders was a nobleman, for pete’s sake! They came all at once, and founded their little town on the edge of howling wilderness, and hashed out a treaty with the Indians, and planted gardens, and got along uneasily with the other Texans, and then…and then… and then….

That’s where the fun comes in.  I don’t know quite how I will shape the story, or who I will focus  on, but I just know there is something in it, and I’ll know it when I see it, once I’ve begun the reading. Think of the shock, the culture clash; coming from Europe, with all it’s tiny old buildings, castles and culture… and standing under the big sky, and looking around at empty hills and oak trees, and seeing… well, nothing built by man. I’m halfway convinced a fair number of European émigrés in the 19th century must have felt like hiding under a heavy piece of furniture and never coming out, except that there was nothing to go back for. What preconceptions they mist have packed with their baggage, what hopes they had, in a new land? How difficult was their adjustment to new and brutal realities on the frontier? It may even be politically current, if Mark Steyn and others are correct about a political melt-down in Europe in the near future. And it’s not much known: I was barely aware of the various German colonies in Texas until I came to live here, and I was a history junkie from the first time I began reading all Mom’s back issues of American Heritage. (Back when they were published in hard covers, and without any advertising.)Best if all, most of it is conveniently located close-by; doing descriptions will be a snap! And so will getting in touch with local enthusiasts. I have written about the German settlers before, even.  (sigh… can’t get link to work. It was  post last year called “Germantown”)

I can hardly wait to get started….  

 

 

Indian Summer

10. November 2006 · Comments Off on Indian Summer · Categories: Domestic, General, My Head Hurts, Technology

Summer has been mild here in South Texas, and so has the fall been: unnaturally so, for today it was into the 90ies, which made it necessary to turn on the air conditioning one more time. Usually it can be done without sometime in late September, or early October; the heat breaks and it is cool at night. It has been so mild, that the leaves on the trees are just beginning to fall; we haven’t had that prolonged cold snap that briskly reminds them that they need to be letting go and moving on, chop-chop. I trimmed one of the grapevines in front a couple of weeks ago… and the poor innocent thing is putting out new leaves already, under the delusion that winter has come and gone.

This has been truly the year of butterflies; they are everywhere, about the puddles and in the late afternoon a whole fair of them orbits the almond verbena. I have two, the size of small trees now, and the ends of the branches are hung with tiny white bracts that smell amazingly sweet on still air…is this fall, now, or is it already spring? We have two gardening seasons in Texas, and this is one of them. My favorite, as it happens. For the next six months, the weather will be lovely and mild— there may be a freeze or two, after Christmas, but nothing much to worry over, and in the meantime, there are butterflies. There are the little brown snout-somethings, but now we have monarchs, great lovely tiger-striped things and more than I have ever seen before, orbiting the buddleia bushes as if they can’t bear to tear themselves away, while the snout-somethings monopolize the verbena.

The sadness that we are supposed to feel in autumn for the end of all green and lovely things is focused this year on the street behind the neighborhood where I live. Stahl Road was a narrow strip of blacktop, a single lane in either direction, which for the longest time seems to have been no direction at all. There were empty fields on either side and deep grassy verges, and the backside of other developments. A couple of churches, the elementary school which is our polling place, and the high school which Blondie would have gone to if I hadn’t packed her off to the tender academic care of the scholar nuns of St. Francis, the site of a pumping station and water tower, a cluster of gas stations and little businesses at the intersections, and Ernie the Veggie Guy, selling produce off the end of his pick-up under the shade of a tree at the corner… not much traffic and all of that easily accommodated by a narrow back road, shaded with a double row of trees. But then one cross road was cut through all the way to the highway, and a couple of other developments went in, and the development we live in was extended all the way to Stahl Road, and an exit road cut through to it, and the traffic has been all too much for that poor little back-road. The City decreed months ago that Stahl Road was to be widened, but our rejoicing was mixed. The project would eliminate that place at the intersection of Stahl and O’Connor that accumulated a puddle of water the size of Lake Superior every time it rained… but it would cost us the trees that lined the roadway for most of it.

The trees would have to go; no two ways about it. Not enough space between them to accommodate two lanes-plus-center-turning lane, no way around that. And the trees were not the sort that people chain themselves to, or institute lawsuits about. They were not very well grown, or attractive trees, to be baldly truthful… not oaks or cypress or redwood, even, or very well grown or cunningly planted…just the usual sort of Texas trash-tree that sprouts wherever hedges have been, in a neat line along the verge, and making valiant attempts to meet in the center over the road and shading the sidewalk. They weren’t much but they were there and familiar most importantly, provided shade against the sun. This is a commodity rare and treasured in what is essentially a desert.

This week, the city crew came and worked their way along, felling every one of them, chopping the trunks into sections and methodically feeding the branches into a chipper. Another crew, with a small bulldozer, followed in their wake, grubbing up the roots and leveling the mounds on which the trees grew, and now it looks quite terribly bare and raw… and new. Another crew has been staging great piles of conduit; a second has been ripping up the sidewalks which had been previously built, and a third, relocating the utility poles to a position giving wider room to the new and wider roadway. The backsides of all those houses which were sheltered by the trees must be feeling their nakedness most particularly this week. It’s all going very fast, as these things happen in San Antonio, and our fear is that at some point all this work will stop and be held in stasis for a three or four years. The road looks so terrible without those trees, poor things that they were. I hardly know my own turn-in, without the row of spindly and yet valiant trees to guide me, after dark. All this week, Blondie and I have been thinking of this song, whenever we drove along this road:

“All the Birds in the forest they bitterly weep
Saying “where shall we shelter or where shall we sleep?”
For the Oak and the Ash they all cutten down
And the walls of Bonny Portmore are all down to the ground”

No, it wasn’t much of a forest, but we were used to it, and now it has been all cut down to the ground. Perhaps they will plant new, when they are done with it all… something sturdy, and fast-growing, and maybe as rich scented as the almond verbena trees.

Rumsfeld Steps Down

08. November 2006 · Comments Off on Rumsfeld Steps Down · Categories: Domestic, General

I suppose it was inevitable, depsite last week’s assurances to the contrary. I wonder how the active duty troops view this…

This is not original…

03. November 2006 · Comments Off on This is not original… · Categories: Ain't That America?, Domestic, General, My Head Hurts, Politics

… but I just had to share it.

2008 DEMOCRATIC NATIONAL CONVENTION SCHEDULE

7:00 P.M. Opening flag burning.

7:15 P.M. Pledge of allegiance to U.N.

7:30 P.M. Ted Kennedy proposes a toast

7:30 till 8:00 P.M. Non religious prayer and worship. Jessie Jackson and Al Sharpton.

8:00 P.M. Ted Kennedy proposes a toast.

8:05 P.M. Ceremonial tree hugging.

8:15 – 8:30 P.M. Gay Wedding– Barney Frank presiding.

8:30 P.M. Ted Kennedy proposes a toast.

8:35 P.M. Free Saddam Rally. Cindy Sheehan– Susan Sarandon.

9:00 P.M. Keynote speech. “The Proper Etiquette for Surrender”– French President Jacques Chirac

9:15 P.M. Ted Kennedy proposes a toast.

9:20 P.M. Collection to benefit Osama Bin Laden kidney transplant fund

9:30 P.M. Unveiling of plan to free freedom fighters from Guantanamo Bay . Sean Penn

9:40 P.M. Why I hate the Military, A short talk by William Jefferson Clinton

9:45 P.M. Ted Kennedy proposes a toast

9:50 P.M. Dan Rather presented Truth in Broadcasting award, presented by Michael Moore

9:55 P.M. Ted Kennedy proposes a toast

10:00 P.M. How George bush and Donald Rumsfeld brought down the World Trade Center Towers– Howard
Dean

10:30 P.M. Nomination of Hillary Rodham Clinton by Mahmud Ahmadinejad

11:00 P.M. Ted Kennedy proposes a toast

11: 05 P.M. Al Gore reinvents Internet

11:15 P.M. “Our Troops are Stupid War Criminals” — John Kerry

11:30 P.M. Coronation Of Mrs. Hillary Rodham Clinton

12:00 A.M. Ted Kennedy proposes a toast

12:05 A.M. Bill asks Ted to drive Hillary home

Lifestyles of the Income-Challenged and Relatively Unknown

01. November 2006 · Comments Off on Lifestyles of the Income-Challenged and Relatively Unknown · Categories: Domestic, General, Veteran's Affairs, Working In A Salt Mine...

So, having bills to pay, and realizing that any return on writing for pay will be a while in coming… I am wading in the waters of employment again, after filing for unemployment benefits a couple of weeks ago. Texas is kindly but stern in these matters, insisting that good-faith efforts be made on a regular basis for remunerative employment. They are also enormously helpful to veterans; yesterday I had to go down to the state workfare center for a briefing, afterwards those dozen of us who were veterans had an opportunity to meet with a jobs counselor. I didn’t need to, as I had two interviews immediately after the briefing, blam-blam, just like that. Hence, I was in full interview drag; conservative suit, silk scarf, matching jewelry, stockings and shoes that matched the handbag, tasteful makeup and all. (My mother trained me well.)
The first was over at the airport, very much a last-minute thing; they called the night before, having pulled the resume I send them the day before that. It turned out to be a preliminary round. Full-time, two-weeks paid vac, salary OK, small office, varied duties. Additional amusement provided by the fact that it was a brokerage selling executive aircraft, and was housed among hangers on the east edge of the airport… with small aircraft coming and going, and being maintained in the same area where the employee parking was located. A single-engine AC yielded the right-of-way to the VEV as I left. This sort of thing would have made the commute rather interesting… if I had pursued it to the second round.

But I didn’t. I went on to the second interview. This was a referral, from the person who fixed my computer two weeks ago, to one of his regular clients who sells very specialized real estate all over South Texas out of a home office. The client has a need for a multi-talented office manager-assistant-secretary with a wide variety of sales-support skills and a facility with computers. It is part time, pays at the bottom of my range, is a small office and probably bound for a rocky ride… but it’s barely twenty minutes away, in a neighborhood I know and like, and I would be entirely in charge once I got up to speed. And I still owe the computer guy, anyway.
I’m a sucker. I accepted the offer, which was tendered about halfway through the interview. I start tomorrow. The fact that I am not the least bit interested in real estate, per se, is probably a plus, from my new bosses’ point of view; I am in no danger of going out and setting up on my own, once I have gotten experience of the field. I want to write, and this would let me do it, in the afternoons… and also pay the bills, until the latest book hits the big time.

Literary Persuasion

25. October 2006 · Comments Off on Literary Persuasion · Categories: Domestic, General, Memoir, Pajama Game

So, I always was interested in being a writer, having actually begun to scribble down stories and adventurous narrations from when I was in the seventh grade, or shortly thereafter. Junior High school was just as deadly, and most of my peers were just loathsome enough that taking that particular refuge in imagination was a perfectly sensible response for someone whose nose was buried in a book very nearly twenty-four seven anyway. I liked to read stories, and I liked write them, and to think up stories and tell them to people… especially to my little brother Sander, who was a perfect mark for some of my best. Like the one I told him, when we were at the beach, once when he was about five; there was a factory or a power plant away down the coast, with the towers and chimneys just barely visible. I told him that it was a factory for making soap; that it sucked in all the white foam off the waves that were breaking all along the beach in front of us, and transformed it into soap and detergent.

Then there was the one for Blondie, when she lost a helium-filled balloon; as it floated away, I told her about the Secret and Mystical Island of Balloons, away off in the middle of the Pacific. It was the natural home for all balloons, where they went as soon as they escaped from children who had let go of their strings. They even, I told her, had rescue squads who ran special missions to retrieve the remains of popped balloons from wastebaskets the world over, and revive them, once they were safe on the Mystical Island of Balloons. Then there was the time she was frightened by the original Gremlins movie; she insisted there were gremlins under her bed. Heck, I had once heard leprechauns under mine. “How did you know they were leprechauns?” asked my mother, when she found me sleeping in the closet the next morning. I had curled up there for some peace and quiet; the leprechauns were very rackety. “Because they were little enough to be under my bed, and they sounded like Grandpa Jim, “ I told her; always logical. I told Blondie that she was safe from gremlins as long as our cats, Patchie and Bagheera, were sleeping on her bed; it was a little known fact that cats were absolute death on gremlins. One of the hundreds of reasons I love small children, they are so gullible.

The trouble with going straight into writing became clear to me along about the time that I went into college for that amusingly useless degree in English, when a couple of things gradually made themselves clear to my young and wide-eyed self. One of them was that only a very few of the duly and properly anointed works of Great Modern English Literature written after about 1930 did not bore me into a coma. Seriously: the reading list for a course in the Modern Novel was enough to make me want to slash my wrists, it was that depressing. Secondly, I realized that of the writers I did enjoy, both ancient and modern… most of them had done something else! They had done something else, seriously and with varying degrees of success before picking up the old goose quill and writing. (Classic quip about trying to earn a living as a writer: “It’s like hooking. Before you start charging for it, better be sure you’re pretty good.)

Just look at the list: Chaucer— diplomat and courtier. Shakespeare — actor and theatrical manager. Dickens — newspaper and magazine writer. Kipling — reporter. Mark Twain — reporter. HH Monro— ok, so he was a man about town and wrote on the side. Sir Walter Scott — lawyer. Robert Lewis Stevenson — trained as a lawyer, worked as a travel writer. Thackeray — journalist and editor. Even the modern popular writers that I liked most had done something else for a bit. James Jones —- soldier. Raymond Chandler — oil bidness. Dorothy Sayers pottered around in advertising, and so did Peter Mayle of Provence fame. Carl Hiaason — newspaper reporter. Hemmingway — well, he squeezed in some reporting. Joseph Wambaugh — policeman. James Herriot spun a career as a veterinarian into four books plus. Only JRR Tolkien camped serenely in the academic utopia for most of his writing life, but he had served in World War I.

There were some exceptions either way, of course, but those works of literature, most especially the modern writers anointed by the academe seemed…. Well, pretty juiceless. Enervating. Arid. Given over to navel-gazing, and the weaving of elaborate language with nothing much to say. Even those few who did attempt something more in a novel than a dry exercise in special language effects seemed to look at real life, and real people as if they were something faintly exotic, carefully placed in a natural setting in a zoo and seen through a plate glass window. It almost seemed as if doing something else, anything else for a while filled a writer up with people, experiences, scraps of odd conversation and occurrences… filled them up with life and energy, and that was the kind of writer I wanted to be. Besides, going out and doing something else for a while looked like being a lot more fun than hanging around for post-graduate studies.

Comment #1, unaccuntably killed by SPAMINATOR, for which I extend apologies:

Email : jocrazy02@yahoo.com
Author : Joe
URL :
Body:
“One of the hundreds of reasons I love small children, they are so gullible.”

When my boys were about 6&7 years old, they had a penchant for testing
escallators. What small boy doesn’t like an escallator? So we were visiting
SEARS one time and their escallator was down for maintenance. They had the
bottom all cordoned off, the steel access panels open and aside, and work lights
shining down in the bowels of the machinery. Scattered around the opening were
several articles of children’s clothing they had been using for rags. I pointed
those out to my boys and said “See? That’s what happened to the last little
boy who played on the escallator. They had to take it apart to get him out and
all that was left were his clothes.” It was one of those Kodak moments and I
had no camera to take a picture of those big round eyes staring at that horrible
sight of the shredded, dirty clothing. All that remained of that last little
boy who played on the escallator.

My youngest is 24 and he STILL remembers me telling that story. LOL

Keep writing. It inspires the imagination of your readers at the most unexpected
of moments.

And as for the great writers? I still remember suffering under the required
reading list back in HS Senior English. Adam Bede. Wuthering Heights. Scarlet
Letter. If I hadn’t been a science fiction fan, that dry as old bones writing
would have destroyed my love of reading forever. I know it has a place in
literature, but I just couldn’t find a place for it in my reading.
Coment #2, also unaccountably killed by SPAMINATOR

Author : Matt
URL :
Body:
I had a friend who told his nephews that he had four hearts and used to be a
trapeze guy in the circus. He was very funny and never missed an opportunity to
spin a yarn, about anything at all to anyone. He was a computer geek for a
living – at one point he was on a team, employed by [large Detroit auto company]
that hacked into [large Detroit auto company’s] computers, networks, etc. to
test security.

I am not sure why we still have the current iteration of SPAMINATOR, as all it seems to do is delete and insult our regular commenters

G*y Cats and L**bian Dogs

20. October 2006 · Comments Off on G*y Cats and L**bian Dogs · Categories: Critters, Domestic, General, Pajama Game

So, now that Blondie and I are supporting a houseful of critters… some of whom interact agreeably with each other, and some others of whom maintain a guarded distance and a policy of non-recognition, and one who spits and snarls in a most hostile manner… we have noticed a rather odd thing. And that is that the two dogs and the two most recent cats have definitely formed affectionate and loyal same-sex unions. (Although one of the gay cats will frequently enjoy a vigorous frolic with one of the lesbian dogs. Wow. That sentence alone should get any number of hits from perverts looking for bizarre porn… yes, I meant you. Zip up your fly and wash your hands.) Yep, and in Texas, too… which ought to completely wig out all those who only know of Texas as Redneckville Central.

OK, so I started back in the mists of time, with a cat, one single cat, way before I had even heard of blogging, although I was aware of that internet thingummy-jig. Said singular cat was the last survivor and the only consistent member of a constantly mutating herd that lived with us overseas. We brought Patchie and her oldest son back to the States with us, the son ran away from my parents’ house while I was in Korea, we came to Texas with Patchie (the queen Elizabeth of cats) where she died of old age and diabetes and I swore that it would be a while before I had another cat, as she had become very high-maintenance in her dotage.

That vow lasted approximately two days; I took in Henry VIII, his littermate Morgie and his little brother Little Arthur over the summer of 1998. Eventually, I began feeding a couple of neighbors’ cats who preferred my garden to their own yards, and tamed a shy little grey catling named Percival… OK, so that makes four cats of the First Degree, although poor little Percy was very much on the outs for a long while with the other three. They regarded him contemptuously, rather like the popular high school kids treat the little, nerdy kid. “Ugh… you lameoid… You’re still here?” He has overlapping teeth; Blondie calls him “the snaggle-toothed wampire-kitty”. But they all rather grumpily adjusted, and then Sammy, the white cat from across the road fell head over paws in love with Blondie, and insisted on staying at our place rather than theirs, and survived being sideswiped by a car whilst crossing the road to get back to our place… well, that was a mark of his devotion. When they moved, he stayed, and officially he became Blondie’s cat. She thinks he is a flame-point Siamese, as he looks like a white cat washed with insufficient bleach, or an orange cat washed with too much. Whatever, he has deeply crossed and near-sighted blue eyes, and hirples around on three legs, holding one front leg up close against his body. Nerve damage, said the veterinarian, although he manages quite nicely, and Blondie says she sometimes thinks she sees movement in that damaged paw.

Since the dogs arrived, the original trio of Henry, Morgie and Arthur prefers Blondie’s room. Sammy and Percival, perversely enough, don’t mind the Lesser Weevil and Spike very much, and spend the long hard hours of a cats’ day and night sleeping on my bed. Curled up together, occasionally waking to wash each others’ ears with attention and deep devotion… oh, yes, they are a matched pair. When Blondie has her own place for Sammy, Percy shall go with them, which I will regret, but I know deep and abiding affection when I see it.

Sammy and Percival like the dogs, and are the only two who play with them, although they tend to favor playing with Spike more than Weevil, since she is so large and intimidating, a sort of canine Xena-Warrior-Princess. Spike is more or less their own size, and Percival does not seem to have any objection to being pinned down by Spike to have his own ears vigorously laved, or to have a good interspecies wrestle. (Sammy only puts up with a little of this.) Percival gives a good account of himself on these occasions; it’s usually a draw.

Now, with Spike and Weevil matches, it would be Weevil all day and all the time, if she didn’t choose to pull her punches. She is a sixty-pound boxer/whatever mix, and at her best and dripping wet, Spike is about ten pounds of dwarf shih-Tzu. On the occasion of their first encounter, Weevil planted one of her great boxer paws squarely on Spike, who yelped heartrendingly… she was only a baby. It hadn’t worked out with the original owner who had taken her home from the kennel from which she was bred, and when Blondie brought her to my house, she was as clingy as an abandoned toddler, and ready to attach. And so she did, to me and to the Weevil, who after that first rather rocky evening, has fondly indulged Spike as if she were a puppy, and allowed her to scramble all over her, and chew on her ears and jowls, without offering any more than token resistance. Funny as hell to watch Spike climb on top of Weevil, and try and rough her up, knowing that Weevil could, if she wanted to, snap Spike’s neck without breaking a sweat. Oh, yeah, they are such a pair. Should anyone ever break into my house in the middle of the night, I will be so protected. I think.

The Inner Martha Strikes Again

03. October 2006 · Comments Off on The Inner Martha Strikes Again · Categories: Domestic, General, Technology

Just as we were fixing dinner on Sunday (pot-roasted chicken with lemon, garlic and rosemary, should anyone be interested) I ran the disposal so it wouldn’t backwash into the dishwasher when I did a load of dishes, but the water kept filling the sink and emptying very slowly. Vigorous action with the plumbers’ friend did not help at all… in fact, it got rather worse. The usual sort of caustic chemical goo emptied down the sink did not help either, although the metal parts of the drain looked amazingly clean following application of the goo. The water would back up, and then drain veeerrrrrryyyy slowly, which was not good. It was good, however, that water or sewage was not emerging anywhere else in the house… like the master bathroom sink, which is what happened last time there was a clog in the main outfall drain a short way downhill of the master bathroom sink. All the other sinks, toilets and bathtubs drained normally.

I am, alas, no stranger to my household plumbing system (said she, laughing hollowly!) I have replaced all three faucet sets in the house, as well as the disposal and the kitchen sink. The last time I had a clog in the main outfall; when several gallons of waste sent down the kitchen sink disposal geysered disgustingly up in the master bathroom sink a few minutes later, it cost me roughly $100, and an afternoon off work to sort it out. But I considered that it was money well spent; not just for the work done, all twenty minutes or so of it, but for the educational value.

Yes, I stood over the roto-rooter man like a deranged stalker girlfriend, watching every move and asking heaps of questions. It did not look like brain surgery or rocket science, and I was damned if I would pay that much money again for something I could jolly well do myself, with the aid of the kindly neighborhood rental equipment place. Oh, yes, they know me almost as well as the hardware store people… it’s where I rented the nailer and compressor when I replaced the fence, a tall ladder to do something or other, the long-handled arbor saw and all those other things one only needs for an hour or so every two or three years. (Northeast Rental Center, on Nacogdoches… ask for Dan. He’ll ask questions to sort out what you need, and then tell you exactly how to operate it.)

The manual snake rented at $15 for three hours. I had it sorted in twenty minutes flat, but I wanted to run a load of dishes through the dishwasher just to make absolutely sure the clog was dislodged. Twenty minutes, fifteen bucks, plus another ten minutes either way to the rental place, plus a morning not spent waiting for a plumber to grace your household with his presence. Works for me, people, works for me.

Green Stamps

27. September 2006 · Comments Off on Green Stamps · Categories: Ain't That America?, Domestic, General, History, Memoir, Pajama Game

I don’t know what brought it on, remembering green stamps and blue stamps, and those thin little books that you glued them in to… possibly emptying all those receipts from the grocery store out of my purse, especially those wadded up ones that accumulate down at the bottom. Heck, is that one from the hair-cut place where if you bring in the last receipt again they give you a dollar off? Maybe I had been reading one of Lilek’s little musings about paper ephemera, and it all came together; the memory of Granny Jessie folding her receipts and a long perforated block of green S & H stamps neatly into her purse, and all those times when we were considered slightly older and more responsible, and dispatched to Don’s Market on Rosemead (about a block south of the intersection of Rosemead and Colorado Boulevard) which had had Granny Jessie’s grocery-buying custom for the best part of three decades, with a couple of dollars for some small item, and strict orders to bring back the change and the stamps.

When was the last time I ever saw a block or a string of trading stamps? Mom didn’t patronize grocery stores that offered them, but Granny Jessie did, and most likely Granny Dodie did also. It must have been sometime in the early seventies; by the time I came back to the States to live for good, trading stamps had gone the way of home milk delivery and those wire baskets with glass milk bottles that used to sit on front porches across the last. Which is to say, along with the dodo and passenger pigeon, except in certain very rare neighborhoods. They were a customer rebate scheme dreamed up early in the century just now over, intended to build customer loyalty, and keep the regular customers coming back, again and again and again. That description fit Granny Jessie to a tee. She patronized the same grocery and department store, the same shoe store, the same church and the same doctor for most of her long adult life, from the time she and Grandpa Jim married in the early twenties, until she went to live in Long Beach, in the Gold Star Mother’s home, fifty years later. According to this entry, they were given out mostly by grocery stores, department stores and gas stations. There were several different kinds, and colors of them. I remember S & H Green, and another sort which was blue; both were about an inch long, half an inch wide, perfed and gummed, and given out at the rate of a single stamp for every ten cents spent.

I do remember Granny Jessie sometimes had great long sheets of them, which must have come from Hertels’ on Colorado, where she had an account for as many years as she was a customer of Don’s Market. And Grandpa Jim must have gotten strings and blocks of them when he bought gas for the ancient Plymouth sedan which he had to sell after being rumbled by the local traffic cop when he made a left-hand turn from Colorado Boulevard onto South Lotus Avenue… from the right-hand lane of Colorado Boulevard. Grandpa Jim’s indignantly voiced plea that he had performed the turn in that manner every day for nearly thirty years cut no ice with the Pasadena constabulary, especially when they discovered that his license was several years expired and he was nearly blind, anyway.

Back to the trading stamps…. They had to be dampened and pasted into the pages of thin little books, so many a page, which was nice and easy when it meant the long sheets, earned when Granny Jessie had spent a lot on groceries and Christmas presents, but was not so easy when you had to paste the little strings and small blocks of stamps gleaned from many small purchases. This was rather finicky and tedious work, which may be why Grannie Jessie saved it all up for JP and I to do, when we came for a visit. She had a great lot of empty stamp books and a bundle of stamps in a drawer in the kitchen hutch. It would be our job, to sit down at the kitchen table with a damp sponge set onto an old china saucer, and fit stamps onto the pages of the blank book. This meant working in several months worth of stamps, tearing off the large blocks at the perfs, and fitting together the smaller quantities in order to completely fill in the page.

And this was entirely worthwhile from Grannie Jessie’s point of view, because the filled books could be taken around to the S & H Green Stamp store…. Which was, I think, on Rosemead, close to Don’s Market, and redeem the filled books for various bits of consumer merchandise; plates and saucepans, serving dishes, appliances large and small, furniture large and small. I have a distinct memory of Granny Jessie saving up her filled Green Stamp books for some rather substantial piece of household fittings, a television even. Probably much of what passed for luxury goods in the tiny white house on South Lotus, with the enormous oak tree in the front yard, came from Granny Jessie’s careful collection of stamps.

Mom had no truck with them at all, though; she was of the opinion that the stores that offered them were more expensive than those which didn’t, and Mom shopped on a strictly lowest-price-available agenda, no fancy fripperies like Green Stamps need apply for Mom’s household dollar. And furthermore, she had no time to fiddle around with pasting stamps into a book… and that is probably what led to the decline and fall of the whole scheme, although it does linger in several different and less cumbersome formats.

Apostasy in Black & White

17. September 2006 · Comments Off on Apostasy in Black & White · Categories: Domestic, General, Memoir, Pajama Game, That's Entertainment!

My parents stoutly held out against the menace of television until the late 60ies, when they accepted the gift of a tiny black and white portable television from a good friend who was moving into a smaller place and had to shed possessions to make that transition. The television itself was about the size of a case of beer, and since Mom had very firm convictions regarding the trashiness, aesthetic and otherwise, of putting a television in the living room and angling all the chairs towards it, the television was banished to the bedroom that my sister and I shared.

The television, with its miniature 12″ screen sat on top of one of the long toy chests that Dad had built to maximize space in our room, and we generally piled onto the bottom bunk bed to watch, during those limited hours per week that Mom had decreed would do the least damage to our school work, family life and general social development. We also had to thrash out a compromise amongst ourselves about what to watch on Friday and Saturday evenings from 7:30 to 10:00 PM, and on Sunday from 7:30 to 9:00 PM. (School on Monday morning, you know.) Generally, if a program aired at any other time than that, we knew it not; or only during summer vacation when we caught up on other programs through re-runs, or visited my grandparents.

So we were television apostates: but I was secretly even more than an apostate. As far as one particular TV icon went, I was a perfect heretic. I wondered for ages what would happen to me, should I ever confess my deep and heartfelt loathing for a certain ground-breaking star of early network television. But I digress.

At Granny Jessie’s house, and at Granny Dodie and Grandpa Al’s, the television— generally a large console model— sat boldly and unashamed in the living room. Grandpa Al even ventured into exploring the wide world of color television, somewhat in advance of the neighborhood, but they drew the line about watching TV during the day; feeling as Mom did that really, one ought to have better things to do during the day.
Oddly enough, Grannie Jessie had no such compunctions, or perhaps thought that by putting no limits on our TV watching during our visits, that we would become surfeited. Generally, she kicked us outside when her soaps came on, and we would stumble outside, blinking at the daylight, dazzled by the real world. After spending hours focusing on the comparatively small, surreal and black and white one, we would be cast on our own inner resources for amusement, and always be at a bit of a loss for a while.

One of the classic television standbys at the time were re-runs of even older television shows – especially reruns of ancient episodes of I Love Lucy. This has always been fawningly described as ground-breaking, insanely popular, luminescently humorous and a veritable Mount Everest in broadcast television. Lucille Ball is similarly worshipped as a genius of comedy, a master of her own image, genius of physical comedy and a canny business-woman, blah, blah blah – and I didn’t accept a word of it – well, maybe the business-woman part. And she was still making movies and television shows well after I Love Lucy, so it appeared that people did, indeed, love Lucy.

But not me. From my earliest memory of watching that show, I was horrified, and embarrassed at the spectacle of ineptitude presented. It wasn’t funny, charming, or amusing – it was cringe-making,pointless – even a bit masochistic. Watching I Love Lucy meant observing a very pretty but spectacularly dim woman make a grandiose and impossible plan, screw it up in every way imaginable, and then bawl her head off in a totally unattractive manner, until her exasperated husband made everything better – in half-hour chunks. I usually felt like blowing chunks, two thirds into the episode. It wasn’t funny – it was a train wreck of ineptitude. Not only did I not find any of it in the least amusing, it made me embarrassed to be of the same sex.

Laughing at Lucy seemed to me like laughing at a retard; kind of cruel, when the decent thing should have been to look away and pretend that you hadn’t seen her embarrassing herself, her friends and her husband once again. And this was – what? Classic television? At any rate it set up in me a burning desire not to look stupid, never to be incompetent, to view situations with a coolly realistic eye, and never, never, ever cry noisily and expect anyone else to rescue you from the consequences of your own stupidity. Which as good a reason to have developed into a small ‘f’ feminist as any other available.

Not only did I not love Lucy, I couldn’t figure out why the hell anyone did, either.

So You Heard…

13. September 2006 · Comments Off on So You Heard… · Categories: Domestic, General, Pajama Game, Working In A Salt Mine...

…The one about the guy who was down in the dumps, and they told him…”Cheer up, things could get worse!” So, he cheered up, and sure enough, things got worse!

Well, it’s not that bad… actually it is, if not bad, at least semi-OK. I am coming down the home-stretch on the “book” first draft, which is the hardest part, I think. Just half a chapter and the present-day bookend-closer to go, explaining what happened to everyone. I think I will have it done by Friday… and then I will go back and polish vigorously. There are some people and sub-plots I want to flesh out a little more, and some characters who really started to come clear in the last half, so I must go back and fill out their terribly sketchy introductions, and make a more concerted effort to juggle a few more characters: there are eight or nine male characters who are extremely significant to the story, four female characters, ditto, and one child. Three, if you count the babies. And a cute bit with a dog. Then there are another dozen supporting characters, as it were, fleeting glimpses of certain historic places along the trail, and a lot business about wagons and ox-teams, though I don’t think I will need to include a recipe for fox, pot-roasted in a Dutch oven. (Excellent eating, by historical accounts, although that may have only been in comparison to coyote, which apparently was totally vile, no matter what the method of cooking employed.)

Everyone who has read a couple of chapters has said, “Omigawd, what a terrific story… and why did I never hear about these people, before?” This is a rather gratifying reaction. It means that it is not one of those things which as been done to death, and thus would have the charm of the unusual. Or, so I hope. So far, though, only Dad has read the entire manuscript to date, and has provided much useful feed back on the flora and fauna of the Great Basin, and the Sierra Nevada. (Note to self: write in some observations about pinon pines. And sage. Lots and lots of sage.) Dad also wants to know a bit more about the half-dozen or so hired men, who were working their way as drovers, or as teamsters. Since they didn’t have the wherewithal to buy a wagon, stock, and the necessary supplies, they worked for their food and board for those who did. Pre 1849 Gold Rush, emigration to California and Oregon was a fairly expensive enterprise; those who ventured it were usually pretty solid and stable citizens… in contrast to many other stereotypical frontier types. (Note #2 to self… put in a bit about the hired men.)

The last month, as I work away on the story have been the most terrific fun, and I am enormously grateful for having been let go from the last job… the one I had for all of seven months. I’ve temped a couple of days here and there, but came to realize that I… Well, I don’t hate it…I just don’t care for it any more. I want to be at home, sitting at the computer in the corner of the bedroom, immersed in the 19th century, with the Weevils sleeping on the floor and Sammie and Perce on the bed. I can only think my last employer perhaps was picking up on this attitude. Certainly, I was very close to snapping “The copier is over there, and you’re legs aren’t painted on!” whenever someone asked me to make a couple of copies of this and such.

I’ve still got the weekend shift at the radio station, and a couple of hours paid work three times weekly, writing for another blog-enterprise… plus the pension, and Blondie’s VA and GI Bill benefits. She started school at the beginning of the month, at a local community college which reportedly is a feeder into the veterinary medicine program she wants. So far, so good. Most of the professors seem to have high standards, and be fairly exacting; I have always entertained the suspicion that a junior college may be actually, the best place around to, I don’t know, maybe actually learn something? It does not have the cachet of the acclaimed institutes of higher so-called-learning, but it doesn’t have the price-tag, either, and Blondie is enormously happy to be in school, working toward the goal of being Dr. Blondie, DVM, at long last.

September has been a sort of holding month for us, a time for me to work away on the completed first draft, which the interested (and legitimate) literary agent has indicated would be sufficient proof of my commitment as a first-timer to actually producing a finished manuscript. It seems that August is the silly season in publishing. The publishers come back from their summer holidays in the Hampshires, or Nantucket or the Cape, or wherever during September, and look to have something brilliant on their desks, so the literary agents are working like dogs throughout August, polishing their best efforts like big shiny apples. He loved the sample chapter, though. And I feel good, about the whole project. I am just a long way down on his pile of stuff “to do”.

Oh, and the “things got worse” bit. Some idiot took my bank card information, and tried to charge $10,000.00 worth of merchandise to some on-line enterprise I have never heard of, much less done business with. Being fairly sharpish and observant when uncharacteristic charges are made… my bank very swiftly put a stop on my card. I can only wish that I could be in the bracket where this kind of thing would pass unnoticed, but I am not. It was damned embarrassing, at Huge Enormous Big-Ass Grocery, when my card wouldn’t go through for $20 bucks worth of dog-food, when I was fairly sure I had more than enough in the household account to cover. It will take a week or so to sort it all out, and not only restore the funds that I had, and send me a new card, but restore my access to the household account funds. In the meanwhile, another reason to stay at home and work away on “The Book”.

« Older articles
Newer articles »