Weird Wednesday

Today is critique day… I’m actually really excited this time. I’ve got about 22 pages ready. I’m so glad I put the other manuscript away and started work on this one. Maybe in six months I can go back and pick it up with fresh eyes and make it happen.

It has been an eventful week for me. I got a lot written, I did our taxes, wrote another article and read a little. Good news though, we are getting a decent refund on our taxes this year. Not as much as I had hoped, but it’s not a sharp stick in the eye.

Where do phrases like that come from? I’ve heard some weird ones lately…

Better than a sharp stick in the eye. - I guess that means it is a good thing, because I’d be all ready to kick some booty if someone put a sharp stick in my eye, well, after I got serious medical attention.

Useless as tits on a boar hog. (I really hate this one.) – Not good for anything, because the boar is the male of the species and we all know that the female feeds the young and is FAR superior than the male. Heh! That makes me giggle.

Lazy as a turd in a whale. – This must be extremely lazy, because the digestive tract in a whale is huge.

Lasts as long as a fart in a whirlwind. – Not long I’m assuming. Wind speed and all that.

These two came from Ande

Take a flying leap at a rolling donut. – Really? I don’t get it… Someone else will have to explain this one to me.

You can lead a horse to water but you can’t make him turn on the faucet. – Nope, they don’t have thumbs…

These two came from Shannon

Your ass is grass and I’m the lawnmower. – This makes me think of M. Night Shamalan…

Is that clear as mud? – Umm… sure.

Slicker than bull snot. – Just gross.

Karin sent me these two:

Hotter than two rats having sex in a wool sock.

Nervous as a long tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs.

I think all of these are hilarious, but I would love to know who the first person to say them was. Can you imagine the looks he/she got?

Any others out there? I’d love to hear them!

2 Fer 2sday

Today’s lines come from Ted Dekker’s Saint.

“Good. The winner will be freed and given a knife. The next one to succeed will be armed with a handgun and will hunt the winner until one of you is either killed or incapacitated. The third will be left in the crate an additional five minutes and then taken to the infirmary.”

Carl dropped the binoculars on the sandbag and picked up his rifle.

And my most recent lines are:

“Uh, sure. Every puzzle – every code – has a key, or system that it’s built on. Take the alphabet for example. If you assign each letter a number, A is one, B is two, C is three and so on, you have a very simple code.”

He still looked confused. “Really?”

“Yes. If we continued the sequence and replace the letters of your name with numbers, it would be 11-5-12-12-5-14.”

“If that’s all it is, then why does your software need so long to decode it?”

She smiled. “Like I said, that was a very simple code, and computers think in only two numbers, zero and one. The software’s trying billions of patterns filled with zeros and ones to find the one that fits and unlocks the encryption.”

“The key.” He smiled and it softened his intensity. “Okay, well let me know when you have something for me.”

“You got it.” She watched him leave, appreciating the view, and got back to work.

I know it is more than two lines, but I don’t know if this is how I want to end my chapter or not. The code she talks about HAS to be in there, it is important later, but something in here is really bothering me…

Any thoughts?

Adoption

My heart is breaking. Hubby and I are about to start the long journey of adoption, and I was on the TARE website, and the sheer numbers of children up for adoption, just in Texas makes me want to cry.

It makes me thankful for the family I have and how amazing and supportive they are.

If you have children, please take a little extra time and hug them today. Let them know they are loved and appreciated.

And, please pray for us in our journey. We need all the strength and friendship we can get.

Fabulous Friday!

I have AWESOME hair. I got it cut and colored last night. Way freaking expensive, but in the seven years me and hubby have been married, I’ve only done it one other time.

What does it look like, you ask. Well, think Alice from the Twilight movie. With kick bootie light red streaks. I love it and look totally different. It’s amazing what a good haircut can do for your self esteem.

Happy Friday all! Oh, and here are a couple more FAIL pics. Enjoy!

They did it!

'Kay, so I said I needed cheering up and the girls at work did it with a series of pictures. Here is a sampling. HaHa!





And my personal favorite! (I'm wicked evil)

So annoyed

Do you ever have one of those days where everything goes your way? You have a wonderful day, get lots accomplished, like, oh, say writing 18 pages of decent story, have an awesome critique group, They Like It They Like It, then you get home.

The dog peed in the floor while hubby sat with my laptop watching hockey fights. He’s obviously in a bad mood, not speaking, just kind of glowering in my direction. I clean up the mess, and thinking it would be easier to just leave him alone and let him get over whatever has his shorts in a twist, I sat down on the couch to read a few chapters…

Evidently that was a bad idea.

As we went to bed for the night, things only got worse. I don’t know what I said or what I did that made him SO angry, but last night was one of those really really long nights. No sleep for me.

He’s fine this morning, and it is my turn to be pissed. I’ve had no sleep, got my rear end chewed repeatedly last night, and I’m just in a foul mood.

I checked all the blogs I follow this morning and wouldn’t you know, not a single funny one posted yet. They all seem to be politically based this morning.

Somebody PLEASE post a funny today! I am in desperate need!

Weird Wednesday Dream

The dream started out innocently enough, I was trying to bathe my cat. Never a good idea, I know, but he stunk. Things are rocking right along until I look around and realize the bathroom we’re in is bigger than my entire house and decorated in 1970’s old lady – all pastels and lamps with little hanging crystals.

The wall directly across from me started to rattle and I leaned back on my knees, not knowing what to expect. Even the cat rolled closer to the side of the lovely pink tub. Music sounded from the ceiling and the wall stopped shaking and slid sideways, creating a two foot doorway. A little small for a secret passage and damned inconvenient if someone is occupying the tub. But hey, who am I to criticize secret passages?

I tried to see into the darkness inside the opening, but I only got the impression of movement seconds before a wave of bugs crawled out. Now, I’m okay with big hairy spiders, snakes, lizards and general creepy stuff, but those damn little bugs freak me out. I screeched like a little girl and bounced around the room. The bathing cat was on his own. Ten or twelve bugs landed in the water with a plop. The cat batted them around while I worked up the courage to rescue him. When I leaned over a huge rolie polie swam toward the cat. The insect was at least two feet long and had a tail like a lobster. And, he was wearing black leather gloves. The music abruptly switched to a tango and the bug swooped in and forced the cat to dance with him.

Needless to say, the dream only got weirder from there. It included a shape shifter wearing fringed jeans, not the trendy, worn out frayed jeans, but dark blue denim with six inch long fringe from hip to calf, a drunken theater performer, and our new President Obama even made a cameo appearance. He was dancing around the bathroom singing, “Obama llama sees a bug in the rug. Obama llama sees a bug in the rug.” And then there was me with a badge and a gun. I arrested the lot of them.



Now you know how I start my day.

Terrific Tuesday

Another author I really love is Beverly Barton. The last two lines I read are from her book Dying For You.

Holding the pistol in one hand, she flipped the switchblade in her other hand closed and dropped it back down inside her bra.

“Stay behind me and don’t do anything stupid,” he told her. She wanted to tell him that she had managed not to do anything stupid while she’d been held captive these past few days and she thought she could continue using her brains for at least a few more hours.

And the last two that I wrote are:

Mariska jumped when the lieutenant asked if there was any place else in the department she wanted to see. She blinked, Kellen turned away and the moment was lost.

Have a happy Tuesday!

Dreams

I am one of the people who are blessed enough to remember their dreams after waking up. Usually that is a good thing for me, because that is when my characters come out to play… but sometimes it’s not so great.

Take last night, for example. I love to be scared, and it takes very little to scare me. I love horror movies, but then I can’t be in a room by myself for a week. I am addicted to a show called Supernatural. My youngest brother got me started watching it and I love it. Hubby likes it, but he isn’t a freak like me.

So, I was watching TV last night, because I was putting off doing housework and actually writing (I’m so bad) and Supernatural was on. Hubby was in another room, and the cat jumped in the middle of my lap. Let me tell you, I squealed like a little girl and ran to the other room. Poor hubby had to come out and sit with me while I watched the rest of the show.

Then, I go to bed and have all these funky dreams about the show and the video I posted yesterday. The freaky girl in the video chased me around with a knife all night long. I woke up more tired than when I went to bed. I probably doesn’t help that right now I am writing about a serial killer who’s weapon of choice is a knife…

I wonder sometimes what ‘normal’ people would think if they got a peek inside my brain.

Happy Freaking Thursday!

So, today I feel like I am the only one in the blogosphere that isn’t down and depressed and maudlin. I want to liven everyone up. I’m a people pleaser. I want everyone around me to be happy and laughing. I had a great critique group last night. We laughed and they actually liked the beginning stages of my new book. I may not have any “followers” here YET. But, I am thinking about breaking out the homemade chocolate chip cookie bribes… If you know me, you know I’m not kidding. And if the chocolate chip cookies don’t work, there is the special recipe banana pudding… or the infamous “Better Than Sex” cake. But, until I get to bake, here is a freaky weird video that a friend sent me. I don’t know whether to be frightened or laugh! Hope everyone has a better day!

Wednesday Wonder

It is an amazing thing to have friends. Sometimes I forget the value of just having someone to say hi to, someone who understands my frustrations and fears, someone who doesn’t care what you can do for them.

So, to everyone that is my friend – thank you.

2 Fer 2's Day

It’s Tuesday! Time to celebrate another two lines… Okay, so maybe not celebrate, but share.

Tomorrow is critique night and I have NOTHING. I’m outlining a new story right now, but it is rough. So, here is the last entry on my outline:

Mariska is at home working on Allison’s website when her phone rings. The caller ID shows Taylor’s number, so she lets it go to voicemail. He calls twice more, but she ignores him. Finally when Aunt Vivian calls she answers. Vivian tells her that Sean is dead.

This is around the end of chapter three and page twenty-two on my outline. Like I said yesterday, ideas are coming out of my ears.

Now, this bright shiny morning I started reading Scream For Me by Karen Rose. I love her writing and when I grow up I want to be just like her! The last passage I read was:

He’d chosen her with care. Taken her with relish. Made her scream, long and loud.

See, I want to be in her head for just a few minutes.

Hope you all have a great day, and if you haven’t dropped by yet, you should go to habitatfortravis.blogspot.com. He and his family would really appreciate it!

Friends, New and Old

I put it away. The Manuscript. The one I have been working on for forever. I’ve tried so many different approaches to it that it was driving me crazy. I was dreaming about never ever finishing it. I finally got so frustrated; I knew that it needed to be put away for a while. The characters are almost family now. And we all know how it is with family. You can only spend so much time with them day after day after day before you are ready to scream at them to leave you alone.

So, with that said, I started a new story. The characters in this one have been running around my subconscious for some time now, and I decided that maybe I just needed to let them out to play. They needed some human interaction.

Once I let them out, there is no slowing them down. I started outlining this weekend and after two and a half chapters I had a twenty-two page outline. I love this. I can’t wait to get home now so that I can visit with them some more. It is like meeting new people that can’t get enough of your attention, AND they think you are amazing.

It’s great for the ego, too. Ideas and thoughts and plot lines are just falling out of my ears, I swear. I haven’t felt like this in a long time. I don’t know if I just struggled too long over the other one and got myself all twisted up in knots or what, but once I knew I wasn’t going to mess with it for a while, everything started to click.

I love to write. I have since I was a little girl. I wrote my first article in second grade. I wrote my first story in third grade. I finished my first full manuscript in Junior High (it is amazingly awful, but I still have it tucked away in a file.) I wrote poetry non-stop in high school, but once I got into college I got so busy with all of my classes that I stopped writing. I got married really young, and got divorced really young. I was stupid, but it was a growing experience.

I got married again a couple of years later, and that was one of the best decisions I have ever made. We lived paycheck to paycheck for a long time. He found his job, I found my wonderful job, and we bought a house. Got some pets. And I started writing again.

I have made some of the best friends through writing. Friends that I would do just about anything for. I’ve had extreme joy and deep sadness in the process, but I don’t think I would trade it for anything in the world. I am a totally different person now, a better person I hope, for the experience.

On a serious note, I went and visited Travis and his family on Thursday. I was torn about going to see them. I didn’t want to interrupt and bother them in their time of grief, but I wanted to offer our support and let them know they have friends out there that care.

It broke my heart to sit and talk to them and see their beautiful boys playing with toys they had just gone and bought. I kept thinking about all their toys and books and the things they love are all gone, but they were safe. All of them. What got to me the most, and what brought tears to my eyes was that even though they are literally going through Hell right now, Travis looked me in the eye and told me that after things settled down some he was going to keep his promise to me.

Just before Thanksgiving, I talked to Travis about giving my manuscript a read through and letting me know what he thought about it. He was planning on doing a My Town Monday post on the museum I work at, and we decided he would pick it up when he came to do that.

I was amazed. He has one of the most generous spirits of anyone I know. His family has lost almost everything, and yet he was worried that I might have thought he wasn’t going to read my manuscript… All I can say is wow. I hope that if I am ever in that position I can be as generous. I don’t know that I would be able to think about anyone else’s problems at that point, actually. I would be incredibly greedy and selfish I think.

So, Travis, if you read this, know that you are freaking amazing and I appreciate you more than you know. Hubby and I are praying for you and yours.

Travis Erwin

An amazing author, Travis Erwin, was struck by tragedy this weekend. His home burned to the ground.

Travis is an amazing person who is ready to help anyone at any time. If you can find it in your heart to help him, a fund has been set up.

Please visit http://habitatfortravis.blogspot.com/

Every little bit helps!