Category Archives: singing

Prebby Flowers


That’s how Doodle Bug says “Pretty Flowers”–or at least he did at first. He’s the 4-year-old autistic grandboy, and he works very hard to make his words come out properly. He talks a little slowly, but he’s very careful with his words. Anyway, this blog entry is called “Prebby Flowers” because I have some in my front flowerbed.

These are the iris right outside the front door. I’ve never had any of the maroon-with-white iris before, but I did have some of the Batik iris (the purple streaked with white) in our previous house. Last year, very few of the iris bloomed, but we’ve had a wet winter (and a very long one, but the snow didn’t seem to hurt anything), and everything is blooming like crazy.


Now these iris are under the bay window, as you can see. The apricot one isn’t quite open yet–I’ll try to get out and take a picture of it tomorrow… (Hmm. That reminds me. Better take the battery out of the camera and charge it up. It was telling me I needed to do that.) But I thought the blue picotee iris were pretty. And if you look on the right side, you can see the rose buds getting ready to bloom. A few are open already, but they’re not where I could get a picture with the iris. You can see a little bit of the blue sage behind them… I’ll have to find the picture where I got more of the sage… Can you tell I like blue flowers? (The roses are red.)

Um. So. This week, I worked on revisions for New Blood. (The Victorian blood magic book, remember?) I think I have the chapters all revised. Need to input the revisions on the synopsis yet. Then I want to let it sit a while longer and go over it one more time. Then I need to type in the rest of the story, and make notes about the changes and revisions I want to make there. Some I can do while I’m typing in, but I think there are some structural changes that need to be made. And that’s not so easy to do while typing. I was rather amused today when my horrorscope said that I needed to put away my artistic project for a little while and go back to it later. Exactly what I intend to do. :) Once it’s typed in.

I had to take time today to judge some contest entries that were due on Saturday. I enjoyed judging them, but I missed the e-mail that said when they were due back, and there wasn’t anything in the packet. I learn a lot myself when I judge contests. It makes me realize what’s missing in my own writing–and I need to go back and ramp up the emotion one more time when I go through the chapters again.

Mostly I wanted to share my prebby flowers with you in this e-mail, but I can whine too, right? I burned my hand Saturday. Burned it bad. Bad second degree burn. (Disgustingness alert! Don’t read more if you are easily grossed-out.)

It blistered up Saturday night, and popped. Then it blistered up again on Sunday. Bit fat quarter-inch swelling ugly blister. Monday a.m. it got a little hole in it, and all the water leaked out, and kept leaking until today, when it basically ripped open. So I put antibiotic on it and put a bandage on it (which wouldn’t stay on my palm), and have been babying it. But it’s still pretty icky. I’m just glad it was on the thumb side of my lower palm. I could still type. So there. That’s my whine. I’ll share more flower pictures with you soon. I didn’t even show you the all-maroon ones. Or the white ones. Or the two-toned maroon-and-yellow ones… Yeah. I got prebby flowers.

Quick Monday Post

Running in quick while dinner is cooking (probably ought to go start the rice in a minute) to get something up here. It’s been a…well, a sorta busy week. I did a lot of sitting around and reading. I re-read a lot of stuff. Re-read Eileen Wilks’ Blood Lines, re-read the 2nd and 3rd “Kitty” books, Kitty Goes To Washington and Kitty Takes a Holiday. I like them better than the 1st book, though I like it okay. But I also had a lot to keep me busy.

Sunday, we had folks over for Sunday dinner, and I cooked on Saturday. Cooked WAY too much roast beef spaghetti…but that’s okay, because it freezes real nice. I need to tear up the last roast and stick it in the freezer. Jan left a pie for us to eat. Fortunately, it’s a kind that the fella can eat, if he doesn’t eat the crust.

Oh, and I tried a new recipe that anyone who likes Southwestern cuisine ought to like. It’s polenta topped with black-eyed peas flavored with cilantro and tomato. I really liked it, and it was easy to make, since I bought packaged polenta. (Had to buy it in “the big city” but it was available there.) Kinda hushpuppy/tamale-ish, and since I like both hushpuppies and tamales, I liked the polenta.

There’s a college music department concert tomorrow night. The community choir got invited to sing along, so I’ve been going to the noon choir rehearsals, and tonight is the dress rehearsal (though we don’t have to dress, just show up and work out all the glitches). There are some fun songs. I’ve really enjoyed the challenge. Wish us luck. It should actually be a good concert. It’s sounding good in practice.

And today I printed out the 1st 3 chapters of New Blood to start revising tomorrow. I won’t be going to town tomorrow, so I ought to be able to get quite a bit done. I hope. I have my notes. Just need to keep hold of all the threads.

More progress

It’s a good day. Okay, so I forgot that I was supposed to head over to the Methodist church this afternoon to help Fredie Jo and Ruth and Rhenda and somebody else decorate and set up for Art Club tomorrow, but hey, I got NINE (count ’em, 9!) pages written this morning.

In the same length of time it took me to write four (4) measly pages last week. Yayyy!!! (picture Kermit the frog running in circles waving his skinny green hands in the air, going Yayyyy.)(That’s how I feel.)

Okay, nine pages isn’t so much, when I have ninety pages left to go. But hey, if I can keep it up, in 10 days, I’ll have the book finished. If 90 pages will get the rest of the scenes in. Actually, I’m probably already over my targeted word count. (sigh) But 9 pages is more than I’ve written on a single day in a very long time, and I’m happy.

We’re just about to begin the actual trial. The 9 pages were working us into it, and getting the magic spell started. Now, the trial itself. Can’t wait.

Though, since I have to make a potato casserole tomorrow, and hike myself and the casserole over to the Methodists by 11 a.m., I may start on this after choir tonight. We’re starting some really cool spirituals. With hard alto parts. Fun!

But really, the book is getting totally cool.

Blogging


I have signed into Blogger at least three times this week, intending to blog, and never got anything written. I did manage to blog this week, but this was three other times I came here to blog again, and never did.

I even had some things to write about. Like, how when I walked down to the bank this week, the librarian saw me heading back (the library is half a block down the street from the bank), and came out and hollered at me to come sign something. I had to sign something to send in to the State Library people. Or maybe the federal Library people. I don’t know. I did read it, but I don’t remember who it was for. I’d forgotten that she called me last week or so and asked whether I was the president of the Library Advisory Board.

I knew I was on the board, but had no clue whether I was the president or not. I’ve been on it for over a year, and we’ve met once. And when Jerri Ann said she thought I was the new president, I said, fine, I’ll be the president. Only now she tells me we need to meet and come up with a policy for the kids’ computer use at the library once school is let out. Sigh. And one of our board members lives way out of town past a couple of slidy hills and some low-water crossings and can’t get to town if it’s raining, so of course it’s been storming all week…

This is like when I agreed to be the vice president for the Friends of the Library, because I wouldn’t have to do very much. Then we discovered that we had to completely split the Friends from the Advisory Board, and the president of FoL went over to be an Advisor, and I got to be the President of FoL–and that was when the treasurer discovered that we really needed to fill out the official IRS paperwork to become an official non-profit organization (even though we barely fundraise $500 per year), AND we needed to re-do our bylaws to make them fit with the IRS papers. Sigh. This always happens to me.

I did remember to go to community choir practice this week. It was sounding pretty good when the second soprano showed up so us altos weren’t drowning out the only soprano who was there for most of rehearsal. Oh well. Performance is Palm Sunday. AKA this coming Sunday. Hopefully, whatever’s making the gunk in my throat will die and I can sing all those Fs without getting rattly. For some reason, an F (the low one–I haven’t been able to hit a high F in 25 years)(I can only hit a high E when the sun is shining, all allergens are dead and the birds are singing sweetly in the trees. E-flat is generally possible.) shakes loose all the gunk in my throat, when there is gunk, and makes me cough. It’s not where the voice breaks–that’s somewhere around an A or B–it’s just the gunk vibration note. (And I’m sure y’all really wanted to know all that…)

The daughter made an A in her probability class for her statistics PhD. The younger son made a 99 on his engineering test. (This after majoring in theater performance and theater design for 3 semesters before switching to engineering.) We haven’t heard from the older son in a while. Hmm. So, life is mostly good.

Oh, and today, we went to town and bought half-price ready made frames for a couple of paintings, and put them up in the son’s room. They look pretty good, if I say so myself. It all started when we moved out the old broken-down dresser and moved in this antique chest/armoire/desk thing (it has drawers, a door where you can hang up things, and a pull-down writing area). Then I brought in one single painting (see above) to see how it looked over the armoire/desk–and the fella said to bring out all the paintings-ready-to-hang, and we found two more that looked good. We put the “Breakfast in Tuscany” painting over the chest/desk and the one above across the room, and a big “boys at the beach” painting above the bed, but to one side, not over the headboard. Yeah, we started something.