Slayer of the Tragically Lame

I was going to write about how I kicked my to-do list's ass today, but right now I can't tell who won that battle.  There are only two things left out of the ten I started the day with, but I'm frickin' pooped.  I think I'll call it a win and go to bed early.

Meanwhile, check out this kickass picture.  I took the photo, but the kid morphed it into something that would be worthy of an album cover.  (Yeah, yeah.  I know.  I'm dating myself there, but it fits.)  Is it just me, or does she look like she's about to leap off that pile of bricks and kick someone's ass? 

Darling Daughter, Slayer of the Tragically Lame.

(And just for the record, those are her gnarly boots, but the shades?  Man, those are mine.)

Memorial Day

Thank you to lose who lost their lives, to those who've lost a loved one and to those who are still out there, protecting our way of life and fighting for the values we hold dear.

Enjoy your Memorial Day, everyone, and take a moment to remember the soldiers who make it possible every day for us to have cookouts and baseball, picnics and walks in the park, love and happiness and...

...Freedom.

Secret Projects

I was surfing through my blogroll this morning when I ran across a post by Shayda Bakhshi wherein she mentions that her current project is a secret and how she doesn't want to jinx it.  Man, do I know how she feels.

I haven't talked much about my WIP.  There's no progress bar gracing the side of my blog.  It only just got a real name the other day - when I realized I can't keep calling it 'Hey, You' and have it come out as a real story.  (Okay, so it wasn't really Hey You, it was Untitled-Fantasy, but you get the drift.)

Reading Shayda's post this morning got me thinking about why that is.  Why is this project secret when I never had a problem talking about other projects before?  Is it just the jinx factor or is it something more?

Which lead me back to yesterday's post about fear.  I don't want to talk about this WIP because I'm afraid of it.  It's not like anything I've ever written.  Not only is it straight fantasy, but it's got a decidedly YA/MG slant to it.  (It hasn't told me which it wants to be yet, but it's not 'adult'.)  It's also got a male protagonist - something I've only done once before and that mystery never saw the light of day.

I'm afraid of this book.  I mean, I really love the idea and I really want to write it, but what if I'm not good enough to write this story?  What if I fail to do it justice?  And really, who the hell do I think I am trying to write a genre I haven't really read much of in years?  (I used to inhale fantasy, but the only fantasy I've read lately is Jim Butcher's Codex Alera series.)  And who the hell am I to think I can write from the perspective of a teenage boy in an alternate world? 

But this story is a bully.  It came to me as part of a dream, slapped me around and told me I was going to write it.  Or else.  And I better do a good job or it's going to kick my ass.  After which it will kick all my other manuscript's asses.  It's already kicked all the other ideas out of my head until it's all I can think about.  Hell, every time I even think about going back to my old stories - just to edit a little, really - it threatens their lives.  "Forget about them for now," it says, "or you can forget about them... permanently."  :cue ominous music:

What I need to do is just give in and write the damn thing.  Toss out 50-60K in a first draft, so I can work on some other stuff - stuff I know I know how to write, like speculative or suspense.  Maybe then it won't have to be such a secret anymore and I can start working on other stuff.

Until then, though, this project is secret.  (Other than the secrets I just let slip about it here.)  Lord help us all.

Have you ever had a secret project?  What made you want to keep it a secret?

Fear of Failure Can Kill Your Goals

Yesterday, Daughter took her college placement exam in Math.  At the risk of embarrassing her, and having her pretty much hate me, I'm telling you about her results.  She bombed. 

She went into the test shaking with nerves and ready to barf.  Midway through, she told me she was going to fail.  When she finished an hour early, I made her go back and look through the questions again, but it didn't do any good.  As soon as she submitted the online test, she got her results back and she placed in the lowest possible course for college - basically remedial math. When my husband arrived home from work, she was sitting at my desk with her head on her arms trying not to cry. 

He blames himself for not having the time to work with her on math this year.  (The man works like 60 hours a week to keep us fed and housed and clothed, so, yeah, he doesn't have the time and I don't blame him.)  Of course, I blame myself for not knowing higher level math at all and leaving her to muddle through on her own.  And she blames herself for not working hard enough.

About an hour after she got the results, she came back to my computer and started in on the tutorials CSU provides for just such an occasion*.  Within minutes, she had herself upset again.  She couldn't remember even the basic things she knows she knows.  I sat down next to her and tried to get her to stop.  Put it all away for the rest of the day and let herself get out of the place she had herself in.  While it's always good to work through a problem rather than wallow in it, sometimes it's better to put a little space between yourself and the problem.

Nope.  She was determined to figure this out.  After all the work she's put in, failure was inconceivable.  Okay.  Fine.  She was determined to do this and do it right then, so I kicked her out of my chair.  I sat down and pulled up the first tutorial question she was having problems with.  I made her walk through the steps she was using in order for me to figure out why she wasn't getting the right answer. 

The answer?  It was as I suspected.  She had herself in such a snit, she was working the problem from the wrong direction - multiplying everything instead of dividing everything.  And as I talked her through the problem, she realized she did know the right way, after all.  The error, as I had suspected, was that her brain was so focused on FAILING that it was screwing itself into the dirt.  And she realized that several of the problems on the placement test had suffered a similar fate. 

This was the point where I reminded her what happened the first time she took the ACT pre-test.  She fell into the same trap.  Worry and angst sabotaged what should have been, if not easy, at least not so damn hard.

Sure, worry wasn't the whole problem.  She legitimately wasn't as knowledgeable about logarithms as she should have been.  And her trig skills could be better.  Neither of us expected her to place out of those classes.  But to place below College Algebra??  She should've kicked Algebra's ass, but instead of stepping up to the fight, her brain turned tail and ran. 

Now, I was going somewhere with this.  (You didn't seriously think I'd risk traumatizing the kid if I didn't have a point to make, do you?)  And it's a point I've made before - as well as one I've fallen prey to...

Fear of failure can be as fatal to your goals as the failure itself.

Like Daughter knows she knows hows to convert meters per second to miles per minute, I know I know how to write a good story.  But sometimes fear of failing - of creating yet another manuscript no one wants - makes me forget how to do what I do.  I get so worried about making the story the way I think other people will want it that I forget that I know how to do this.  Hell, sometimes it makes me second guess myself so bad I don't know where the f*** to put a comma.

And as I was thinking through this, I realized I've been in the same place as my daughter was yesterday - since the start of the year.  Except for me, fear of failure has kept me from even trying to take the test, so to speak.  In fact, maybe it's been my problem since 2004.  Maybe I never really got over the fear of failure born from that first round of rejections for my virgin manuscript. 

Anyway, it's something we're both going to have to work through to get where we want to go - me to publication and Daughter into College Algebra.  She's already started working through it and I'm so proud of her for getting back on the horse that pretty much kicked her in the teeth.  Now I just need to sort through my own problems and figure out which ones to tackle first. 

Keep your fingers crossed. 

* Daughter has two more chances to take the Math Placement Exam to improve her score, plus she has another test she can take to get her at least past remedial math.  The tutorials are to help with the latter, but they can't hurt with the MPE either.

Stuff Stuff Stuff

Sorry I've been AWOL.  I'm hip deep in stuff - college stuff, rain stuff, picture stuff, flood stuff, cat stuff, angst stuff, Hubby work stuff, bill stuff, crawl under a rock and hide stuff, kick someone in the shins stuff, run over that inconsiderate bitch stu...  Ummm, yeah, well... You know how it goes.

Plus, I think I'm peri-menopausal.  Which might explain some things.  (Like the urge to run not-so-nice-people over with a combine.) 

In other news, I finally took a couple pics that Mom is happy with.  Yay.  If all goes well, those will go out early next week.  (I almost said Monday, but then I remembered Memorial Day.) 

All I can say is thank the gods I bought a couple pints of ice cream this afternoon.  Chubby Hubby is better than I remember.  I can't wait to try Imagine Whirled Peace. 

Now I'm going to curl up on the couch and try to forget how much I still have to do. 

What's on tap for your holiday weekend? 

Couchevisionesia

Why is it every day I have plans to do stuff, but by the end of the day, that stuff still isn't done? 

Hey, you there in the back!  I hear you calling me lazy.  I am not lazy.  I recently diagnosed myself with the dread disorder: Couchevisionesia.  So, I can't help myself.  Cuz like it's a real disorder.  It's the reason that every time I sit on the couch in front of the TV I can't remember everything else I have to do.

Like today... I was supposed to clean the kitchen when I got back from errands.  I sat down - just for a minute - and before I realized what was happening my husband was home for lunch.  Then when he went back to work, I thought I could just rest for a second...  and he was home again from work. 

Frasier, Will & Grace, and Old Christine in the morning... According to Jim, that other sitcom I can never remember the name of, and two hours of Grey's Anatomy.  After Grey's, I managed to shake myself out of my stupor and get some photo work done.  Still, if I couldn't remember what I watched, the whole day would be a blur.

Couchevisionesia - it's a killer.  One of these days, they're going to find a big puddle of me melded with the cushions, clutching the remote.

I don't know if there's a cure, but it seems like preventative medicine would be just not to turn the damn thing on.  But then how would I get my Grey's fix???  I can stop watching everything else any time I want, but not that.  Please.

Couchevisionesia.  Ever had it?  How did you get over it?  Or is it like malaria and you never really get over it so much as hope it stays in remission?

Photographer Me

For some strange reason I decided to undertake the job of taking my daughter's senior pictures.  Trying to save money, I guess.  That and the leading photographer in this two horse town... well, he takes awesome pictures, but I don't like him on principle.  (Long and boring story there.  Suffice it to say, he's a butthead.) 

If you've been around here enough, you know I like to take pictures.  And I'm not so bad at it, if I do say so myself.  Here's the thing.  Taking portraits is a totally different animal from taking nature shots.  Totally.  And while I can blame some of the crap shots on not being as familiar with my Nikon as I should be, the rest of the blunders are on me. 

Like this one...

Okay, so I told her to make a goofy face - just for kicks - but the blur?  That's on me.

I've flattened the top of her head, turned her pink, caught her in a pic worthy only of a mugshot, but most of my gaffs are just blur.  Holding a camera steady for longer than a few minutes is harder than one would think. 

Still, I think I have a few good photos to print for actual Senior Pictures.  The family members who replied to my email think so, too.  (Although Mom insists that if I can't edit the strand of hair out of her favorite casual shot, I have to take more.  And I will.  Anything for my Mom.  She's a goddess, after all.)

All in all, it's been an interesting and educational exercise.  If I had it to do all over again?  I might go back a year in time and fork over the money - regardless of how much of a dork that photographer is.  Still, I'm glad I gave it a try.

Ever undertaken something you could've easily paid someone else to do?  How'd it turn out for you?

Dis Dat and de Odder Ting

Thanks for the birthday wishes, everyone.  Of course, I didn't hear about the coming Rupture until after my birthday - otherwise I would've partied harder.  (Okay, not really.)  Forty-one seems like an odd age for the end of the world, doncha think?  :shrug:  Oddly, this is the third or fourth prediction of the end of the world I've lived through, so I'm not especially worried.  We've all gotta go sooner or later, right?  Just not today.  "Pardon me, but I'll have to skip the rapture.  I have too much to do." 

Max is 99% and back out in the world.  The only way you can tell anything went wrong with him is the hairless patch where the abscesses were and the two scabs on his shoulder that look like he survived a vampire attack. 

After waking up to a semi-sunny morning (at 5:45am - WTF is up with my body clock?), the clouds rolled in.  Bleh.  We've already gotten more than an inch and a half of rain this week.  Wet and cold.  It's 40 degrees right now.  This isn't May weather.  It's more like March.  Does that mean I get a do-over of the previous two months?  Pretty please?

I spent five minutes in the parking lot of the store yesterday watching a bird I couldn't identify.  Turns out it was an Eastern Kingbird - all poofed up against the unseasonal cold.  It looked like he was doing his best puffin imitation.

Since my birthday is over (and my anniversary, too), I'm going to try to get back on the 'get healthy' wagon.  Hubs and Daughter ate the last of the cake yesterday.  I finished off the Dreyer's ice cream.  With those out of the way, the path toward eating better has been slightly smoothed.  Temptation be gone!  Until I remember those packs of chocolate pudding I got during the awesome sale.  I'm a sucker for a good sale.

Which reminds me.  I need to buy the kid a laptop computer for school.  I'm thinking small with just enough of everything she needs to get her schoolwork done.  Hubs is thinking top of the line - spare no expense for the kid's education kind of thing.  Daughter is thinking anything that has an awesome graphics card, because like ya know she'll need it for the rare times when she isn't studying and wants to relax by playing a computer game.  Ya right.  Since I'm the one shopping for it, I think I'll win.  But that's probably just dreaming on my part.  I'm the Mom.  I never really win. If I won, she'd be going to a smaller school - or maybe a community college for the first couple years and then CSU. 

I really need to get back to writing again.  I have been plotting in my handy notebook with my nifty red pen, but not a whole lot of actual writing in being done.  Instead I've been working on Daughter's Senior pictures.  (yeah, I know.  shoulda been done last fall)  And her graduation announcements.  Senior pics will be sent with the grad announcements, so I have to have those done ASAP.  Ya know, since she's like officially graduated a week from today.

I'm really not ready for any of this.  Can ya tell?

What's up in your world?

New Crayons

I'm 41 years old as of recently (sorry no birthdate announcement - stupid identity thieves ruining my birfday and junk).  I love birthdays - even the hard ones like last year's big FOUR OH.  :shudder:  I mean, how can I get upset about the fact that I survived another year? 

So, I was looking to get myself some goodies to celebrate my continued survival.  I roamed up and down the aisles of the local department store.  New jeans?  Not until I can get back into a size 12.  The shirt and shoe selection at Podunk Dept Store stinks.  They had some cute summer dresses, but I have nowhere to wear such pretties.  (Plus, I don't think I can pull off tube-top dresses anymore.  The top shelf is a little too large for such gravity-defying feats.) 

I wandered over to the new book rack.  And then I remembered my TBR pile from hell.  No new books* until I make some headway through that.  As I turned away from the books, trying hard not to weep, I noticed something in the school supplies.

A big shiny box of Crayola crayons.  96 colors!  In all my life, I've never had the BIG box of crayons.  Hell, I was lucky if I got the 64 color box as a Christmas present.  And that had to last me all year. 

But I'm 41.  I have a 17 year old kid getting ready for college.  I'm way too old for crayons.  So I turned away and went back to roaming the aisles in search of the perfect birfday present for myself.  The CD rack was a proliferation of Country/Western intermingled with Lady Gaga and Coldplay.  The DVD section didn't have anything I wanted to see enough to pay $20. 

I couldn't find a damn thing and I sure as hell didn't want to drive an hour to arrive at Walmart.  Bleh.  Plus, my mind kept going back to that shiny new Crayola box.  I'm 41... I should be too old to color in coloring books... 

Screw it.  Who says I'm too old to have crayons?  And who cares what they say if they do? 

So, I went back and bought that big box of crayons.  Then I went to the other end of the store to pick up some new coloring books.  (Who's stupid idea was it to put the crayons and the coloring books on opposite ends of the store anyway?)  I got one there - the selection sucked - and picked up another four at the local dollar store.

And when we got home, my off-to-college kid and I sat in the living room, coloring to our hearts content.  Oh, the new colors are so wonderful.  I think I like 'asparagus' the best.  And the books we found had the best pictures.  I think my indigo and jungle green dinosaur** is brilliant, and daughter's cute kitten should be hanging in the Louvre.

It was the most fun we've had together in a while.

I am 41 years old and I got crayons for my birfday.  It was wicked awesome.

When was the last time you did something that you were too old to do?  How much fun was it?  And if you haven't done anything too young recently, get yourself out there and buy some crayons already. 

* no new books = no impulse buys of books I wasn't already planning on buying.  I'm still ordering books.  Okay, so I'm still occasionally buying on impulse, too.  It's a sickness.

** so totally not Barney colored.  Plus, he has magenta spikes on his back.  So there. =op

Tornado Season is Here

Tonight, tornado season arrived in northeastern Colorado with the first warning of the season.  Lucky us, it was just a warning based on cloud rotation and no spotting of an actual twister, but tonight just the beginning.  Hopefully, our luck will hold and everything will bypass us again this year.  I'm keeping my fingers crossed. 

I grew up at the end of what we called tornado alley in Michigan - a stretch of flat land between Lansing Lapeer County.  I never saw a funnel, but on several occasions I saw some scary rotation in the clouds above our house.  Here, though, they get some Auntie Em, Auntie Em stuff.  Eastern Colorado = Kansas-lite. 

Do you get tornadoes where you're at?  Are you as fascinated by and as scared of them as I am?

Totally Stupid Things

Still trying to work through some issues with my new WIP.  Writing straight fantasy is a lot harder than urban fantasy.

Anyway, here's a photo from what started out as a nice day trip in the Wasatch Mountains and ended up with a harrowing ride up a snow-covered road not nearly big enough for the sedan we were in.  Picture snowbanks brushing the passenger side and a sheer drop off the driver's side.   One slip of the tires and we'd have plummeted a hundred feet into an episode of "I Shouldn't Be Alive".  :shudder:

I wish I'd gotten pics of that, but frankly, I was too scared to think about my camera at the time.
 (There was a pic here, but I had to delete it.)

Ever done anything so totally stupid you wished you hadn't done it, but that you now wish you had pictures of?

Derailed

My blogging habit has been derailed for the day.  Sure, it's back up.  Otherwise I wouldn't be typing this now.  But it's left my Dashboard in disarray, so I can't tell what posts are actually new and which ones are old.  (A few of them I know I'd already read said they were only 5 hours old.  Umm, right.)  If I miss commenting on your blog or reading your blog, forgive me.  I'll try and wade through everything by the end of the weekend.

Picture Pause

Thanks, Everyone, for your concern about Max.  He's doing much better and his wounds are healing well.  Today, he even got out of his rehab room and strolled around the basement for a few minutes.  (After griping about being confined to one bedroom, of course.)

I return for your positive thoughts, and well, because I'm tired, here's a picture I took somewhere on the road to Arches National Park...

With the torrential rain we've had all evening, I could use some of that sun.  How are things in your little part of the world?

My Badass Boo-Boo Baby

If you haven't been around a while, or read the archives, I have this former-stray cat named Max.  He was abused and broken when I rescued him.  He'd obviously been on the streets for a while, with a busted jaw no-less, but at some point, someone loved him.  He looks to be Maine Coon - if not fully than in part, he's a lover-boy with a rumbling purr, and someone had him neutered.  Yup, he's my boo baby.

He's also a badass.  He'll kick any other cat's ass just for looking at him sideways.  Set foot on his lawn?  Fuggetaboutit.  "You want a piece a me? Come and get it, asshole."  Which is why he's a not just a boo anymore.  He's literally a boo-boo baby. 

Usually in these fight, Max wins.  He kicks tail, takes names, and files them away for later.  Not last week.  Last week, I think someone kicked Max's butt. I woke up one morning and he wouldn't come out of his box - all day.  "Not even kinda hungry.  Just leave me alone."  When I finally coaxed him out, he limped up to me and meowed like he'd never been so demoralized in his life.

I thought he just pulled a muscle or something in his shoulder.  I brought him inside for a couple days - just so he wouldn't have to worry about trying to run on a gimpy leg - and he seemed to get better.  Since he was better, I took him back outside.  I thought the lump on his shoulder was residual swelling.

Until it burst.

I won't go into the gory and disgusting details, but Max ended up with two burst abscesses on his left shoulder.  I left messages for the vet, but not a peep all weekend.  So I tended to Max myself.  Picture a woman with a bottle of mecuro-clear (clear mecuro-chrome), a bag of cotton balls and prayer.

Yesterday morning I called every fifteen minutes from the time the vet's office usually opens until 10, when he's usually out in the countryside tending to cattle.  Still no answer.  I finally got ahold of the guy around 4pm (when the doc usually gets back from his large animal visits), and got Max right in. 

At that point, I didn't really need the vet to do anything.  Max's wounds had drained and were starting to heal.  What I needed more than anything was the vet's ability to pony up with the antibiotics.  So, the vet looked at him, cleaned his wounds, looked some more and gave me a bottle of pink goo to squirt down Max's throat twice a day.

Yup, Max is my badass boo-boo kitty.  He's a great cat.  The only one I know who can growl and purr at the same time (when I was first cleaning his wounds) and he'll be fine soon.  Here's hoping he learned to not be so badass in the future, so he can avoid more boo-boos.

The Voice

Over on Janet's Journal, I said I was going to do a post about The Voice.  If you haven't seen this show yet, I really wouldn't bother.  It was only the first couple of episodes I want to talk about anyway, and after those two, they changed the format to a kind of steel-cage death match for singers.  (Imagine two girls inside a mock boxing ring screaming singing Pink's F***in' Perfect at each other - offkey, no less.  I wanted to rip my own ears off.  Thank goodness I didn't have to resort to that because I have a remote and working fingers.)

Nope, I want to focus on the format of those first two episodes.  Four judges of varying goodness (in my opinion) with varying qualifications sit with their backs to the singer.  The singer walks on stage and starts singing.  The minute a judge thinks he can work with the singer, he hits a button indicates he's interested.  If more than one judge hits the button, the singer has to pick between them - choosing whoever she thinks would be best at furthering her career.

Sound familiar?

Sure, in the query process, there aren't any fancy spinning chairs with flashy lights.  You only sing to one judge at a time.  And there are way more than 4 judges.  Still, there we are putting our work out to a group of faceless judges who have no clue who we really are - other than that one performance. 

One shot.  That's all we get.  And with that one performance, we have to present our work in the best light possible just to stay in the game.  Except sometimes we just shoot ourselves in the foot...

On one of the episodes of The Voice, a guy came out with his guitar.  He had an okay voice, and he looked like he ought to be singing something Country/Western.  I think his voice would've lent itself well to something in the vein of Garth Brooks or that other guy who sings patriotic songs (I don't listen to country much, can ya tell).  Then he started singing a song I'd never heard before that, in my opinion, kinda sucked.  None of the judges hit their button for him, but after he was done, Blake Shelton (the country singer judge) told the guy he should've never picked a Lady Gaga song.

Well, duh.

Another gal came out, and I thought she was quite nice.  She did something country as well, but she picked a song by Blake Shelton's fiancee - on purpose, hoping it would give her an edge.  No one hit for her either.  Blake's answer was that he was intimately familiar with her music choice and she didn't offer anything new or different to something he already loved. 

See where I'm going here?

And then we came to this pretty little blonde - covered in tattoos and looking a bit like Gwen Stefani (after she went solo and got better personal hygiene).  This girl came out with Pink's Sober.  And she slaughtered it.  She tried every vocal trick in the book, but she couldn't sing the way Pink sings.  Maybe she shouldn't have tried.  Maybe if she'd tried something simpler, she might've made it.  (Okay, so Aguilera picked her for her team, but that makes my point. I don't like that woman, at all.)

In the first case, we have a guy who went with the wrong genre.  Maybe he did it because he thought the song was popular, but he failed by not sticking to his strengths.

In the second case, we have a girl who thought she was giving herself a boost by picking a story the judge loved - but she gave him the same old same old without adding anything new or special enough to get representation.

In the last case, we had a girl who could've used a few more years working on her craft but went for it anyway and ended up with a judge who wasn't all that good herself.  (Time will tell whether this chick actually makes it big despite my criticisms.  Stranger things have happened.)

Okay, I got distracted thinking about how popular Aguilera is even though I can't stand her, and now I can't remember where I was going with all this. 

I guess my point is that sometimes we do the best we can and still don't get the success we were looking for.   (Like the one kid who sang Train's Hey Soul Sister (better than Train, if you ask me) and only got a hit from the country/western guy.  He looked totally bummed, but them's the breaks.)  And sometimes we only think we're doing the best we can but we're only getting in our own ways.   

Or maybe I didn't have a point and this was just an interesting analogy.  Hey, cut me a break.  It's early on a Sunday morning here.  =op

What do you think?  Did any of you watch The Voice? 

Working But Here's a Pretty

This guy landed in the tree across the street a couple days ago.  Gotta love the zoom function.

I Deserve Better

As I was laying on the couch tonight after dinner, after cleaning Daughter's plugged drain, after taking care of injured cat*, I scooped another mouthful of ice cream and thought "Screw the diet, I deserve this."

Later, I caught a glimpse of my naked self as I was climbing into the shower and thought "I don't deserve to look like this."  And I was right.  The ice cream was incredible, but as much as I loved the instant gratification of Cookies n Cream, I sure as hell don't love the lump I've turned into.

I deserve better than laying on the couch eating ice cream.

I deserve better than breathing like a freight train because I climbed a flight of stairs.

I deserve more than dreaming about the body I used to have.

And I definitely deserve more than letting my stories go unwritten while I gather dust in front of the boob tube.

But I'll never get any of the things I know I deserve if I don't work toward them.  I need to get off my lazy ass and exercise both my muscles and my brain.  Atrophied muscles and an atrophied mind are no way to go through life, son.

I can't promise this feeling will last.  Lord knows, I've kicked myself in the butt many times before only to wind up right back on that couch watching another rerun of Frasier or Friends or Grey's Anatomy.  For now, though, it's here and I'd better damn well make use of it**.

Because I deserve better.

What do you deserve?

*Max showed up with a mysterious shoulder injury a couple days ago and has been recuperating in style - complete with fresh roasted chicken chunks and plenty of babying.  He should be back to chasing the neighborhood toms tomorrow or the next day.

**And when I got out of the shower, I hand wrote another page of the fantasy.  It ain't much but I'm still finding my way with this.

Picture Pause

Today's another case of 'had a great idea for a post and lost it', so I'll just offer you this picture I took yesterday.  Enjoy.

I was going for artsy-fartsy.  Did I achieve it?