birthdays

Two weeks ago, my baby turned 5. This was an eagerly anticipated rubicon - her toddler and preschool years have been long, and a bit whiny, and challenging to deal with. We all have looked forward to Miss Bunny being 5. Oh, have we looked forward to it!

But today, my middle child turns 7. Now, I have trouble remembering that he's 6. Somehow, Charles is always 5 in my mind, and since I still haven't come to terms with 6, 7 is completely off my radar! And he's been such a nice 5-year-old and 6-year-old ... I hope for equally good things from age 7. Once I get used to the idea, that is!

American Princess Girl and other random commentary

Just saw a commercial for Disney Princesses in the standard American Girl doll size. The real question is, what took Disney so long? American Girls are a major cash cow, and it's shocking that Disney hasn't cashed in on that sooner.

We've fallen off the chore chart wagon in the last few weeks, got off schedule and haven't managed to get back on schedule. You'd think it would be easy to just get to it, switch the charts over, etc., but somehow it seems more time-consuming than that, and therefore hasn't gotten done yet.

The music from St. Elmo's Fire makes it sound as though it should be a more heart-tugging movie than it actually is. With a more satisfying ending. I'm not knocking the Brat Pack, but I find the music more evocative than the movie.

I'm feeling quite moved by the extraordinary personality of Mondo Guerra on Project Runway. He and Adam Lambert from American Idol really are the poster boys for being comfortable in your own skin, being true to who you are even if who you are is more flamboyant and attention-grabbing than most people are comfortable with. I would be very happy if my children could grow up to be that secure and confident.

car shopping

It's that time again - lease is almost up, and must hunt for and select new car. Ugh.

Firstly, I am a disaster where negotiations are concerned. DISASTER.

Secondly, I hate being "sold" to. All I really want is to walk in, look at the car I want, ask whatever questions I might have, and leave. Not an attitude appreciated by car salespeople.

Thirdly, I tend to know pretty well what I want before I get there, so it frustrates me when they don't (for reasonable reasons of inventory) have exactly what I want on the lot to be looked at. Makes me wonder what the point is of going to see the car in the first place.

This morning, I went to two dealerships. The first one I showed up to at 9:25 (they opened at 9). It was a ghost town. Clearly people had been there, but there was no one to be seen when I walked in. It's a small dealership, more service than sales, so the inventory was exceedingly small. Veronica and I wandered around the lot looking for minivans, saw only one or two (obviously not open, so I couldn't look at them). Finally went in, stood there for 10 minutes - while one of the service guys went by three times, looked at me each time, but never spoke. So I asked the cashier. Turns out, the entire sales staff was in a meeting. All of them. No one watching the door, no notes letting potential customers know where the sales staff was. Frankly, if they'd had a minivan displayed in the lobby, it would have been my favorite dealership ever, but since they had nothing in the lobby, I was mostly just frustrated.

Second dealership, one car in the lobby. A minivan, as it happens. I got two steps in the door before someone came over to ask me questions. First thing he did? Ask me to sit down so he could take all my information. He was displeased, to say the least, when I declined to give him my phone number. I said what I wanted was to see how the base model had changed since my current vehicle was made, three years ago. What did he show me? A top-of-the-line model. No offers to take me out onto the lot to see a base model, and he knew very little about the differences between the top-of-the-line and the base.

Ugh. If I liked minivans, or thought I was likely to take better care of my next car than I have my past ones, I'd just buy one and be done with it.

book reviews

On my weekend away, I read 7.5 books! I was very happy. :)

Elaine Viets, Half-Price Homicide. I felt this one wasn't quite up to the standards of her others. It was still fun, but Helen was not a particularly sympathetic character during most of it, there was a plot twist that was hard to believe and seemed unnecessary, and the writing just wasn't as good. I know the author suffered a stroke (or possibly a heart attack - a life-threatening medical issue, at any rate) that she later recovered from, and that might well explain the difference. Still, those issues aside, her characters and setting were vivid and the book was an amusing read.

Arthur Conan Doyle, The Lost World. This is an old favorite. Very Victorian, but with a lot of action and inventiveness. Well worth reading!

Robert Hale Strong, A Yankee Private's Civil War. This is the first Civil War memoir I ever read, and I still think it's the best. Strong was a private from start to finish, so what he remembers are details of camp life and campaigning that higher-ranked memoirists may have left out. He also volunteered for a lot of extra duties that provided him with some unusual experiences, especially during the March to the Sea. His writing style is warm and personal and detailed.

Kathleen Kent, The Heretic's Daughter. I should have really liked this book. The writing is good, the author clearly felt strongly about her topic (the Salem witch trials, specifically the Carrier family, from whom the author is descended), and the picture of life at the time is vivid. But somehow I just didn't warm up to it. I thought it was a bit too florid, over-written in places, and I didn't feel connected to the main character. Several of the secondary characters were better-written and far more lifelike and interesting. I don't know ... there's nothing particularly wrong with it, but it didn't seem to grab me.

weekend wrap-up

Here we are this afternoon, back from Plymouth and home to the kids and the husband (good things) and the great multicolored splash of the calendar, the omnipresent hovering dog, and the house (not as good).

Trying to get back on track today. Unlike most years, my brain isn't still in its blissful fog of solitude. I was ready to come back yesterday. But that's apparently not quite the same as being fully invested in the routine!

thoughts on the Pioneer Woman

So I used to follow this blogger - the uber "mommy blogger" - called the Pioneer Woman. Now, initially, I was a bit disappointed because she's not a pioneer, just a ranch wife and mother of 4. And not particularly historically minded. But I followed her for a while because she was funny and interesting and had some good giveaways.

But then the number of people entering the giveaways rose to the tens of thousands, and I stopped bothering to enter. And over time, I noticed that she told the same stories and posted different versions of the same pictures, over and over again. (The blogosphere's answer to Janet Evanovich, whose books are fun and entertaining, but eventually you notice that nothing. ever. changes.)

I follow another blogger, formerly known as "The Country Doctor's Wife", who virulently despises the Pioneer Woman, because she followed the same trajectory of interest that I did (although in her case, much more intimately, with exchanges of emails and a visit to the famed ranch) - starting off interested and impressed by the vibrancy and only then realizing that there is nothing under it. The vibrancy is all their is. Pioneer Woman is all about "keepin' it real", and there's a lot of discussion about the idea that what she shills - the plain, simple country life - is a complete sham (apparently they're not just ranchers, they're millionaire ranchers) ... but the truth is, I think she does keep it real. I think her blog, with all its photoshopped pictures of children and dog and flowy blouses and absolutely no discussion of books or inner thoughts or depth of any kind, is absolutely who she is. And while that was fun to peek in on for a few months, after a while I realized I'd seen it all.

So, now whose blog should I be reading?

two days more!

A beautiful quiet hotel room by the sea is waiting for me, oh yes, it is!

This weekend's agenda: 9 books to read; 5 stories to work on; the standard downtown Plymouth shopping trip and self-guided walking tour; the closest mall to meander through; meals to eat at favorite restaurants. This year I'm hoping to try some new restaurants. No working, limited email and Facebook, no laundry or cleaning. No soccer. Also limited amounts of sleep, as of course I never go to bed on time and don't like wasting my alone weekend in sleeping in. I'll catch up on sleep some other time. Next summer, maybe. :)

Just have to get through the to-do list for two more days and then I'm off ...

clone me!

These are the days, when my to-do list is larger than my D20 randomization system can handle, when I wish I could create a second me and assign it all the tasks I don't want to do. Cleaning my kitchen and doing the dishes would be top of that list, and following that would be writing emails to my editors, all of whom seem as stressed as I am.

Perhaps what I need isn't a clone, but a doppelganger such as the toons in Who Censored Roger Rabbit? have. (That would be the book, not the movie.) Ah, well. As it is, I need to buckle down and get cracking!

online writing workshop

So I've been at this fanfiction thing hammer and tongs since the end of February, and the output has been immense. Also intense. And I have learned a ton! About the writing process in general, about my writing process in particular, about what people respond to and what they don't. So here are the big things I feel I've learned:

1) the importance of multiple good betas. Every chapter gets looked at by two people with differing tastes whose opinions I trust, and it makes the writing a lot better. But it's also important not to use your betas as a safety net and count on them to fix the major issues in a chapter.

2) the parts that I as the author tend to be the most proud of are rarely the parts that the readers respond to, and the opposite also tends to be true. Watching for reviews on chapters that I still love to reread months later was a big learning experience, because they didn't go across the way I expected.

3) it's more important to write at a regular pace and put out quality work than it is to write a ton quickly. (I've learned this more from other authors than myself - I've slowed down when things weren't coming fast, but a couple of the other authors I've read just keep going, writing more and more stories, and the writing suffers. It becomes banal, and falls short of what the writer is really capable of.)

4) A formal outline like I was taught in fourth grade isn't always necessary, but it's important to have some idea where you're going. Otherwise, the story meanders a bit and you have a tendency to lose people's interest.

I've learned other things about pacing, and strong verbs, and keeping your characters' voices consistent, but those are the big ones that I think will be most useful in the future.

Monday, Monday

Oh, my poor neglected blog, how lonely you must be sitting out here in cyberspace unupdated. Too much to do, too many commitments, too little time. (Or, possibly, too little organization!)

Today is a relatively productive day, prepping for a busy week and a lovely quiet weekend away by myself. Also a cold, grey Monday with no rain - fall is here and announcing itself rather loudly.

Watching an episode of McCallum that seems to have no John Hannah - egad! the horror - listening to the dishwasher, and burning through the to-do list, slowly but surely.