Category Archives: Uncategorized

Hurricane season officially begins in the Gulf of Mexico on June 1, which (the Gulf, not June 1) as I type is either about 3 miles away, or 400 yards (you can do the conversions to metric, my brain is too tired to look up a website to do it for me). It depends on if Offuts Bayou counts as the Gulf–which I guess it doesn’t, since it’s really off Galveston Bay. So–3 miles from the dayjob. Two blocks from my house. (The picture is from “our” hurricane, Ike, at Fort Crockett Park, about 6 blocks from my house…)

However, I don’t pay a whole lot of attention to it until a tropical depression forms somewhere and the Weather Channel starts to get excited about it. On June 1, our hurricane supplies are only beginning to dwindle from last year (I think we still have pinto beans from 2 years ago), and we’re probably not riding anything out anyway, so… yeah. No need to get really excited about it until there’s something to get excited about.

Which means that last week, when “The tropical depression that will be named Alex if it ever gets winds above 50 mph” was fooling around in the western Caribbean, the fella went out and replenished our hurricane supplies. We now have TWO 40 lb. bags of pinto beans. One of them is half used. We just don’t eat that many pinto beans… Plus a humongous bag of rice, which will probably have to be replaced before the season is over in November, many cans of tuna, chicken, green beans, etc. and 4 or 5 cases of water bottles. We may have to replace those too. We drink the water.

Unless weather patterns change drastically, tropical storm Alex won’t mean anything to us here except rain and maybe some waves for the local surfers to get excited about. The rain is pretty exciting too. It’s been dry. And the oil spill cleanup shouldn’t have to stop working either.

Anyway, now that there actually IS a hurricane in the Gulf, it feels like hurricane season has arrived.

We used to live in Tornado Alley. All my adult life, actually, I’ve lived in Tornado Alley. I don’t get too worked up about tornados, because most of the time, they go somewhere else, and if they hit–well, there’s not a whole lot you can do about it, except get in the bathtub or closet in the middle of your house, because usually there’s not much warning, and they’ll probably go somewhere else anyway. Hurricanes give you a lot of advance warning, and it’s easy to leave town to get away from them. (For us, anyway. We have lots of inland relatives to stay with, too.) But when they hit, they really hit.

So. Yeah. It’s Hurricane Season. There’s an actual storm in the Gulf. It’s going somewhere else. Life goes on.

Still writing, little bits at a time. Those little bits will add up.

Summer just seems to be made for fun, bouncy songs. “Hot Fun in the Summertime” and “Under the Boardwalk” and “Up On the Roof”–they’re all about summertime. They’re all really old songs, (Not as old as “In the Good Ol’ Summertime”) but I don’t know if any of the newer songs (I listen to Breaking Benjamin and Avenged Sevenfold, thank you, and even Lady Gaga, among others.) specifically mention Summer. The 60s beach party songs just seem to be suited to “summer songs.”

Anyway–I’m not sure why I’m riffing on summer songs, except that it seems to have suddenly become summer. It was a cool spring, then all of a sudden–Wham! Ninety degrees and 900% humidity. (Yes, I know that’s not technically possible, but…) And the oleanders have been blooming like crazy for better than 6 weeks now. I am very impressed. I mean COVERED with blooms. Plants almost solid pink, or white, or red. I’m amazed every time I drive down any street in town. (We have lots of oleanders because they are salt-resistant.)

And so far, I really haven’t had time to enjoy the summer, so far. I’ve had to make a couple of trips to check on the Alzheimer-y parents. Then I caught a case of The Flu That Would Not Die. And it’s just been really busy. I haven’t even had time to go out for a swim in the Gulf.

Yes, I know the Gulf of Mexico is full of oil. But the oil is east of us, and so far, it hasn’t come west. Haven’t seen a single tarball, much less that oily gunky stuff, along the shoreline. I want to swim before we get any–if we do. The current runs east, not west. It’s going to Florida, not Texas. I have a lot of sympathy for Louisiana and Mississippi and Alabama, and Florida, too. But I can’t be sorry it’s not coming this way.

So, yeah, it’s summer. Lots of stuff to do, lots of places to go. So I’d better get my writing done, huh?

I’ve always loved both art and music. I took oil painting classes when I was in junior high and early high school, and piano lessons for years, as well as participating in band in high school and college. In fact, the fella and I met in the Baylor University Golden Wave Marching Band, following family traditions. (I played flute (not very well) and he played trumpet and B-flat baritone.) (One does not play instruments very well if one never practices.) I got back into the painting while I was in the Panhandle–haven’t managed to pull it out again since I’ve been on the island, though. Sigh. Anyway…

So we encouraged our children to be involved in art and music–or at least music. The daughter has taken up watercolor. That’s one of her paintings from her trip to Sardinia. Yes, the Sardinia that is the island off the coast of Italy where Italians (and apparently many Germans) go to vacation. (Statisticians must have really good conferences. She got to go to Dublin too. I am totally jellus–except for the statistics conference part. Don’t particularly want to go to one of those, just to Dublin, or Sardinia.)

All three of our children were in band (trombone, trumpet and baritone). They have variously taken up guitar and singing. The oldest & youngest have played with learning keyboard. They are able to sing because they have not been handicapped with the allergies their father has had. They can hear and match pitches.

And now, the next generation is coming along. The middle grandchild loves to play with his parents’ trombones. (We moved seven of them the last time they moved.) He loves music, especially the songs in Disney’s Fantasia, both volumes. He is so enamored of Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue that one of his favorite birthday gifts was a book about the Gershwin brothers and how that music came to be written. And he’s Seven years old.

He also wants to know why there isn’t a Rhapsody in Purple. (This may be why he colored himself purple with markers the other day…)

He wants to jam. Not in those exact words, but he does. This is his picture of the instruments in a jazz band. Okay, so the trombones look a little like pregnant, one-legged camels, and the trumpets look like they could play from both ends, but I think they’re recognizable. I guess there are so many trombones because his parents have so many. (They met in the Texas Tech Marching Band, in the trombone section, just FYI.)

I just like the look of the picture. I think it could make a cool all-over fabric print, or something. Not bad for a 7-year-old, is it?

In other news, I had the Flu that Would Not Die last week, and am only now finally getting myself vaguely back into the swing of trying to get my book finished. I am so glad I don’t have a deadline.

So, yeah. I’ve kinda taken the past month off. I didn’t mean to do it, but–well, it happens.

I think I’m finally getting myself off dead center, though. I let the story ferment in the swamp a while, deliberately not thinking about it. Then I talked about it, a little bit. Mostly about how I really didn’t know which scene needed to come next.

This week, I threw down some Tarot cards. I thought I was doing a reading for my heroine, who is the confused one right now in the story, but the first spread–yeah, I went ahead and laid them out in a Celtic cross–seemed to fit my hero better. I didn’t write any of them down, but the “You, where you are” card was one of the ones involving heartache–not the 5 of Cups, but maybe the 2 of Swords. Or maybe the 8 of Cups. I don’t remember. What I do remember was the “As others see you” card was the 9 of Cups. In that others saw that he had everything he could possibly want–but really, inside, there was heartache. But heartache moving away. And the outcome card was — dang it, I don’t really remember. Either Justice or Resurrection. Justice, I think. Getting everything he deserved.

Then I did another spread, a triangle for my heroine. I wrote these down, and so I remember them better. I don’t have the notebook I wrote it in with me, alas. Anyway, in her present, there was the Fool. But for my heroine, it was more like deliberate ignorance and fooling herself than innocence and faith. She’s ignoring things she really does know. Then in the near future, there was the Magician, but he was reversed. I know a lot of people don’t read reversed cards. I used to turn them right side up, but I usually don’t any more. And it fit–though the meaning I got from it doesn’t match what I usually read this one as, because in the heroine’s story, her attempts to fix things and “make the magic happen,” blow up in her face. And then she lets her fears and the lies she’s told herself run her right off the cliff (Knight of Cups and Knight of Swords in her later future). There were 2 cards in each side of the triangle, but I mostly remember the Fool and the reversed Magician. (The others fit with these cards. I do remember that.) And the central card, that centers the whole reading was Strength. IOW, the heroine is stronger than she thinks and stronger than she realizes, but she needs to get control of her fears and guilt and grief–and she can.

So, between the two readings, I have decided that I’m going to write the scene I had in mind, rather than skip it. Or at least have the event happen. I may skim over a lot of it, but I think it’s going to be a triggering event to kick off the Big Black Moment. Which I will then have to write, but it will get me to the end of the book, and I’m hoping I can have it done by the end of June. There just isn’t that much left to write. An emotional blow up. Probably a literal battle scene of one sort or another. And it’s done.

What did those readings have to do with my writing? A couple of days ago, I wrote about being stuck. I couldn’t decide whether to have this event actually happen, or jump straight into the Black Moment. Either way could work, but I just didn’t know. I couldn’t make up my mind, even after letting the alligators in the swamp that is my subconscious chew on things.

This is where Tarot comes in, for me. It’s a good tool to get the chewed-up bits in the subconscious out where I can get a look at them. The pictures can be symbols, or they can be literal. They don’t have to mean what the book, or some class or site on the Internet says they mean. (And that internet link is a good one; it’s where I learned Tarot.) It’s about what they make me think of when I see them. And the “everyone thinks you have everything you want” card hit me. The scene I wasn’t sure about is one where that would happen. People would see the hero and heroine together, and think they have it all. But they don’t. The “magic” blows up in her face. That’s how the cards helped me see what I sort of knew, but couldn’t pull up out of the swamp. The cards themselves are nothing more than tools to help me see what I already really know.

In the meantime, since my writing process includes what you see in the picture above, I am typing in what I already have written, so as to get my head fully back into the story.

We’re off to visit the fella’s parents this weekend. I haven’t been up there since his mom broke her arm back in January, though he has. We also have to get the paperwork filled out so the grandboys can come down and go to Sea Camp this summer. It will be fun.

We don’t have a storage building, unless you want to count our garage. It’s big enough for 3 cars, but we can’t get a car in it. It’s too full of bicycles, furniture, boxes (mostly of books) and other… stuff.

We also have a storage unit in the little town where my parents live, about 174 miles inland from our sand bar of an island. It’s drier there. None of my books have become moldy yet, but the furniture is, and some of the plastic binders the fella had in boxes.

So, when I drove up to check on the parental units and go to the doctor with Daddy, I took ten boxes to put in the storage unit.

Both the fella and the son told me, “Some of them don’t weigh anything at all, and the rest are only sort of heavy.”

They lied.

NONE of the boxes weighed nothing. One was fairly light, but the rest were all at least “sort of heavy.” And a couple were so heavy, I staggered the few paces from the back end of my Ginormous SUV to the opening of the storage space, dropped the box on the concrete, and kicked it into place. Sort of.

Two of the boxes were of my books. One was a box full of the books I’ve written–mostly the Rose books, I think. But I didn’t open it to look inside. The other box, I made up from two boxes of books. I opened them up and merged them, taking out books I thought the boy would like to read (Linnea Sinclair books from before 2007, Patricia Briggs, etc.), and writing books and some books I couldn’t remember why I kept them. Those, I’ve been re-reading and enjoying.

The parental visit was rather climactic. The doctor decided it was time Daddy needed to stop driving, and did us the favor of telling him so. He seemed disappointed but accepting in the doctor’s office. Sort of “Hmm. Well, I’ve quit driving on the long trips.”

“Yes, but you need to stop driving altogether. Your reaction time just isn’t good any more.”

“Hmm, well, all driving? Hmm. I guess.”

But he got cranky about it later. Sigh. So, that step has been taken. He’s gone off his patch medicine, because of side effects–he’s lost 10 pounds since he’s been on it, and 138 lbs for a man 6 feet tall is just too skinny. I’m really hoping we can keep them at home for the rest of the year… Oh well.

I’ll try to post something writing related later this week. It’s been really busy since I got home. And we’re going to visit the fella’s parental units this weekend.

Yes, the moment has arrived. The youngest son has graduated. He’s done. Through. Finished. Complete–or his degree is anyway.

The grandboys were thoroughly bored sitting through the graduation. They got up to go to the bathroom at least three times, each. And had to stop to talk to their Dad, who was waiting to take pictures on the sidelines, on the way to and from. But they were good, except for whining about being bored.

The son is taking a week off to sleep, and play a little bit. Then he’s going to hit the job hunt. There are thousands and thousands of just-graduated students all hitting the job hunt at the same time, but I don’t imagine too many of them have degrees in marine engineering technology. Hopefully, that will give him an advantage…in something.

Our two boys look a lot alike, don’t they? (It’s the hairline, and the chin.) Some of Rob’s friends were asking if they were twins, but no. Rhys is 6 years older. We were glad he got to come down. It would have been great to have their sister down for graduation too, but she was in Italy. Sardinia, to be precise.

We ate all our food–had lots left over. I had strawberries on my waffles for breakfast, and made shrimp enchilada casserole (I didn’t have enough actual corn tortillas to make enchiladas, so I used tortilla chips and layered things.) with leftover grilled shrimps. Yum. We did away with the 10 pounds of potato salad pretty quickly… (Ten pounds of potatoes makes 10 pounds of potato salad, right? You may take off the peelings, but you add eggs and pickles and mayo and mustard and pickle juice, right?) (Yeah, I made that much potato salad. And I ate the last little bit for my Sunday night supper.)

We went to the girlfriend’s graduation party on Sunday, and left the boy there to visit for his week of sleeping. He might come home during the week. Don’t know. They came to go to Schlitterbahn (the water park, which the littlest grandboy calls “Slitherbonn”) today, but it was closed. So we had lunch, Rob got the oil changed in his car, and they’re going back to the Big H to play putt-putt.

I am trying to get back into a rhythm, but so far, it ain’t happening. Maybe tomorrow. Today is my RWA meeting for Houston Bay Area Chapter. We’re having a workshop on Tarot for Writers by Arwen Lynch. I’m looking forward to it. I dug out my five extra Tarot decks to pass around for people to look at.

Tomorrow is soon enough to get myself together, right? Right.

So, the boy is graduating. His degree will be a Bachelor of Science in marine engineering technology. It seems to be the sort of degree one ought to be able to find a job with, even in a slow economy. We are justifiably proud of him, and have invited everyone we can think of who might come to attend graduation, and then come to the house for a party afterward.

Okay, so it won’t be exactly a blowout. We’re not exactly the “blowout” types. There won’t be a kazillion people there–maybe as many as 15, depending on how many of the boy’s friends come. Our older son and his boys will be here by supper time tonight. The fella’s parents can’t come–his mom’s broken arm and injured hip is much better, but still not good enough to sit in a car for 5 hours. His brother has a son graduating college in Colorado at the exact same time (even accounting for the time zone difference). My parents–well, when I called them this morning, they had forgotten that we made arrangements for my sister to bring them down today. (sigh) But I think they’ll get it together and be here. Along with whoever else decides to come with the party. One or more of the nieces might come. The little one likes to travel…

The graduation ceremony will be in the morning (which is how the sister gets to come, since Saturday night is her son’s senior prom), and then we will repair to the house and barbecue shrimps and chicken, and eat potato salad, beans, and strawberries and angel food cake. I have boiled the eggs. I will make the potato salad tonight. As well as peel the shrimp and skewer them to be ready for grilling, and cut up the strawberries, and maybe cook the beans. We will be ready.

I figured I’ll probably be doing family stuff for a while–I might be taking the parents back myself, if they want to stay another day– and we’re going to a graduation party for the girlfriend on Sunday, so I thought I’d do the graduation post before it happens. Who knows when I’ll have time to do a post-graduation post. And I still can’t find the camera cord to download my pictures from a month ago. Sigh. Craziness.

I really shouldn’t be doing this. I have lots of other things to do. The son is graduating college. (YAY! Last one out!! We will get a Raise!) (That is, once he gets a job and moves out.) Anyway, his graduation is Saturday morning, and we have lots of company coming in Friday night. We have cleaning to do, shrimps to buy (because we’re going to throw them on the barbie), potato salad to make, beans to cook–all the things one does when one has a party.

And I’m still in a reading frenzy. See, I picked up a book I had in my closet, in a stack of “re-read in case you still want to keep it” books, and re-read it. Valor’s Choice by Tanya Huff. And I liked it. So I bought another book in Huff’s Valor series, and also picked up the first book in Elizabeth Moon’s Vatta’s War series, Trading in Danger. I read the Huff book, and liked it, but wanted a bit more of a time gap before I read another in that series. So I read the Moon book.

Then I got books 2 and 3 in the series. And read them. I am now reading book 4, and have book 5 on the Reader waiting for me to finish #4. I do not want to clean. I don’t want to cook. I don’t want to go to work. All I want to do is read. I really hate getting stuck like this. Especially when I have so much else to do.

Yeah, I’m enjoying these books. They start off a tiny bit like Bujold’s Miles Vorkosigan story when he gets kicked out of the space force academy and goes off and creates his own mercenaries–but not. The heroine, Kylara Vatta, gets kicked out of the academy, and is shipped off on a family trading ship, but the characters aren’t really similar–Miles is much more romantic than Kylara, and much more hyperactive. Ky gets into fixes more because of events around her, than her own actions (though not always). Anyway, there’s a lot of adventure and space battling and intrigue and, well, all kinds of stuff. And I need to finish the darn books and get through graduation and the flurry of things I have going on afterward–like doctor appointments, and dentist appointments–I have to have a new crown on a back tooth because a piece of it is threatening to break off–and parental unit stuff, and– Just thinking about it makes me tired. At least the sister is bringing them TO graduation. I may have to take them back.