I've Moved!!!

I've moved. Please visit my new and improved blog at: http://bkbirch.wordpress.com/ .
Please take a moment and update your links.

It's a Statistical Anomaly

I am home all by myself. It certainly wasn't planned, but here I am all alone.Now being alone might bother some people, yet I'm loving it. We had plans to spend the day with some friends at the lake, but B4 was invited by a friend to go to the beach for a week and I had to wait until he got picked up. Hubby took B1, B2 and B3 to the lake without me.

I suppose I could drive out there now, but to be honest, I hate boats and I loathe lake water. It scares me because it seems bottomless and a little "hungry" for someone like me who is not a good swimmer. I much prefer a pool and the breaking waves of the ocean. I think I might have drowned in a past life.

I just got my hair done and I'm getting ready to polish my toes. Sure I could go get a pedicure, but I really don't mind doing it myself (when I have time) and I'm saving twenty-five bucks to boot! Of course I've got the usual laundry and little things to do, but I still have plenty of time to kick back and goof off!

I've got all of the short stories, articles, author interviews and poetry ready to be formatted and uploaded to The Scruffy Dog Review. I'll probably get some of that done later this afternoon.

Ta Ta!

Bad Bad Day

Our beloved Maggie, a thirteen-year old German Shepard died this evening. She was so old and weak. I feel like I've lost a child and I'm beyond grief. I'll miss you old girl.

B1 wants another dog. I don't think now is a good time. And if we do decide to get another dog, it will be a mutt, preferably a rescue dog.

On top of that my desktop computer crashed last night during one of those damn horrendous thunderstorms that passed through. I took it to the shop to see if it can be repaired. Most of my files are safely backed up, but I did have alot of music that wasn't backed up. The big problem is that it acted as the server for our home network. Right now I have the laptop hooked up, but it is a sorry replacement. Why can't we ever have gentle rains around here? We get torrential rains, hail and high winds every time it rains. Could it be global warming?

I haven't written a darn thing since the last edit of my novel. I mailed it out to the requesting publisher last Thursday, so now I wait.

MEAN PEOPLE SUCK!

To the f*cking b*stard to hit the beautiful dog and left it for dead in Northeast Charlotte this morning, I HOPE SOMEONE RUNS OVER YOU AND LEAVES YOU FOR DEAD YOU STUPID *SS! THANKS A LOT FOR MAKING ME WATCH AS THIS POOR ANIMAL HOWLED IN AGONIZING PAIN BEFORE IT FINALLY DIED RIGHT WHEN THE POLICE PULLED UP TO HELP IT.

Many, many thanks to the wonderful police officer to tried to help the dog. I was at the red light and I certainly was prepared to pull over, storm out into traffic and rescue the poor animal as soon as I could get on the other side of the intersection. I think several other commuters were preparing to go the same and if the culprit would have been there, we might have seriously injured him or her.

Well, thanks to human indifference and utter cruelty, I haven’t had a good day. I can’t get the image of that poor creature out of my head. On top of that, my own dog also had a horrific night. We had tremendous storms last night, and unbeknownst to me, Maggie had tangled herself up so she couldn’t get inside her house when the rain came. My husband found her this morning still tangled up. Poor thing didn’t even bark. I’m so in tune to her bark, I certainly would have heard her because I was awake for hours last night.

She’s thirteen-years-old with arthritis in her hips and she no longer has control over where she goes to the bathroom. I can’t let her inside the house anymore and it breaks my heart. Unfortunately, we have to keep her tied up. She’s on about three meds to help with the pain and usually is pretty mobile. But, like old people, she has her good days and bad days. I suppose when the bad days outnumber the good days it will be her time. Sometimes I wonder if having a pet is worth it. Losing them is like losing a member of the family and it hurts.

All in all, it is not a good day!

Where have all the blogs gone? Miss Snark - gone. Nadia Cornier - finito. Ramblings of a Suburban Soccer Mom - on haitus. Even my own blog has become more and more sporadic. Has blogging lost it's appeal? Have we said everything that needs to be said? Nah, probably not. Perhaps it's time to search from some new ones to get addicted to.

And Done! . . . AGAIN!

My eyeballs are bleeding, my brain has been reduced to mush and my fingers are fried, but the novel is DONE! I'm printing on my trusty old Canon Bubbjet printer while I'm typing up this blog post. I've back it all up and sent a copy to my email server. Tomorrow I'll place my baby in the mail and hope for the best.

The rest of the week will be spent on the Summer Issue of The Scruffy Dog Review and then it's back to the YA Fantasy. I can't wait to get back on the new WIP. Sometimes it's better to create than edit.

Uneventful but busy day at work. There were a couple of quality issues that were urgent, but it's all been taken care of. Yay me!

I can't type anymore today. Heck, I can't think anymore. Just 200 more pages on the printer and I'm calling it a night.

A Glaring Defect

I thought I was almost finished with the edits/polishing of the novel. I was thirty-tw0 pages away from the end. MY ENDING IS TOO RUSHED! I can't believe I didn't see it before. It is full of suspense and the writing is good, but it's almost like "and then they did some stuff and blah, blah, blah" THE END.

I worked on some ideas to fill in the holes and draw it out more without putting the reader to sleep. For those of you who've read my ending, it won't change -- much. It certainly won't be pristine with all the loose ends tied up. It will still make some people mad, but it'll also keep them thinking. I'll sleep on them tonight and get busy tomorrow.

The day job is going okay. The "busy" season planning is behind me and now all I have to do is tweak a few parts here and there and I should be okay. Now that I've said that, the bottom will probably fall out first thing tomorrow morning.

Have you ever thought everything was going okay and then something happens that makes you question your sanity? It happened today at work and I swear the culprit did it just to shake me out of my comfort zone. It wasn't necessary. I was just beginning to come out of my shell and talk to a few folks, but now I'm crawling back into my "happy place" and just doing my job. I can't elaborate more, but it kind of ticked me off. I'll get over it, I suppose.

Well, off to write in my sleep.

Soul Searching and Kitty Problems

On the writing front, I’m still in the middle of my last and final read through of my novel and then it is off to the Publisher who requested a full. Then it’s back to the YA fantasy.

I received some great feedback from my writers group on a short story, so I polished it up and submitted it. Now we wait.

I received the interview answers back from the author to the Summer Issue of The Scruffy Dog Review. I’ll work on that later this week, but not until I finish the novel.

I haven’t been writing too much lately and I just haven’t missed it as much as I would have liked. Instead, the break got me thinking a lot about what I’ve been missed and/or neglected since I was “bitten” by the writing bug.

Since I’ve been serious about writing, which I’ve estimated the time to be around mid-2004, I’ve had a few successes (which seemed worth it at the time), but I’ve probably wasted more time and money on this “dream” than I’ll ever get back. I have to be honest with myself and come to terms that the effort I’m putting forth just isn’t paying off. Even when I’m not writing, there’s always a plot twisting churning in my head or nonstop character chatter. Let’s face it, I’m not going to be a best-seller and that’s if I get published at all. The odds are against me in this business in that there are many writers who are just as talented (if not more), better connected in the business and hungrier to succeed.

I haven’t completely thrown in the towel, but I’m certainly moving more towards my writing being a hobby and not an all-consuming force that everyone around me must reckon with. Who knows, I’ll probably come to my senses in a week or two.

There’s been a lot going on outside of writing since I last posted. I spent yet another weekend at the softball field where B3’s team won the WFC State Championship. It was a long hot weekend. B2’s team placed second in a tournament the prior weekend. I got sunburned because the rest of us hung out at the pool while B2 and hubby traveled to the games.

I fell at the bottom of the basement steps last week and twisted my ankle. It’s not broken, but it is a bit tender. The kids are not allowed upstairs with their cleats on and so there’s a spot in the basement by the steps where they take them off. Well, every shoe they own is now in that pile and one of them managed to trip me up. I think it was B3’s shoe. When I fell, I also messed up my shoulder when I landed.

About two weeks ago my little black kitty named Puma went missing. I didn’t think too much about it because he is pretty much an outside cat. I normally find him sitting in the kitchen window, waiting for me to let him in to eat every morning, but he hadn’t been there for awhile.

I’ve been walking around the neighborhood in the evening, and ran across him once by a small creek. He followed me, B4 and B3 half way home, but fell back. I assumed he’d come home when he was ready, but he never did.

Last night, I and B2 went walking again, and we called out for him where I saw him last. He never showed. We walked up a hill and around the block and back by the area again. We called and called. Nothing. I called out and waited some more. At last, Puma came out of the bushes towards me, stretching his back like he had just woke up. I was so happy! I scooped him up and gave him a hug. He’s not an affectionate animal, so I put him down to follow us home.

He kept wandering off, so I told B2 to stay with him while I walked home and get the truck. I started back to the house.

“Mom, come back!” B2 called.

“What!” I was already about 50 yards away from them, so if I had to walk back, it better be important.

“Just come back!”

I walked back to where she and Puma was.

“That boy over there is calling ‘here kitty, kitty, kitty’ to Puma.”

I looked through the trees and sure enough, there was a twelve or thirteen-year-old boy calling my kitty.

I called out to the boy, politely saying, “He’s my cat. He’s been missing for a few weeks now and I’m taking him home.” I scooped him up and carried him home. I suppose karma got me, because I fell in a hole in someone’s yard (I couldn’t walk in the street because the passing cars were making Puma skittish) and twisted my ankle again. That’s okay though because I got my kitty back.

I think some dogs got between him and the walk home, because there were a few locations on the way home where he got really scared. I know dogs live there and usually they’re very friendly and the owners have invisible fencing, but how is a cat supposed to know that.

So now, Puma is strictly an indoor cat and I broke out the litter box after I got him settled. I detest litter boxes, but I’m not going lose my cat again.

I got B4 signed up for football and B1 signed up for Drivers Education, which just happens to be the same week as the NSA World Series and sometime in there, I have to go to work. Busy, busy, busy.