All Dressed Up And…

 

Boodle at Borders

The Universe keeps leaving me messages lately.  Not great message either.

Frankly, I think I need to change my number, or at least find a way off its speed dial.

For the moment though, I’d really like to know why the Universe seems so opposed to us going camping.  I mean, it’s not as if we’re higher (or sadly much lower) impact than most people who spend time up on Lower Saranac Lake.  We use a rowboat equipped with a little 2-cycle motor to zip between the ranger station and our camp site instead of a canoe (though I’d be content enough to canoe most of the time, it’s nice to have that motor for the initial setup and break down periods); we tend to do most of our cooking via a campstove instead of the fire pit; and I do use dish detergent to wash the dishes in the lake.

Old Litter in Bright Green

I have even been guilty of bringing soap bubbles for my son to play with at the camp site.

However, the few plastics we bring always get brought home and either recycled or disposed off in a more conscientious manner.  We do not leave broken glass or litter in the wood as some have done.   Our choice has always been to leave the campsite a little nicer for the next people than we ourselves had found it.

Which, btw, means we like to leave it as close to pristine as possible on a State Camp Ground.

So why has everything interfered in our camping this year?

• The first disaster was a minor one–my husband somehow booked the wrong campsite.  This would normally not be a horrible issue, save that we have a child who is still learning about the outdoors, what is safe, what is not and there are several sites on the lake that have huge rocks that just drop off into the lake without warning.    We know very little about the section of the lake we’re going to be at this time.  Could be good, could be bad…  The mystery is enough to make me cautious, but not enough to cancel the trip.
• The second “disaster” has been the timing of the head cold of the year.  I’m just starting to get over it, but the Boodle is getting sick now and there are odd hints that the Leader of the Opposition Party (that is, my husband–now known as the LOP) is working on getting it too.  Being sick where the quickest route to a hospital is seaplane doesn’t really appeal to me.
• The major disasters however happened last night when the LOP started doing an inventory of all our camping gear…

ANTS!

Need I say more?  Well, I probably do, since it might now seem that drastic, but these guys were both huge and everywhere.  And they’d eaten their way through our $400 tent, our air mattress and our rubber raft. 

This isn’t stopping us since the LOP has “connections” nearby (his father was already loaning us the boat and just threw in a tent for us to use), but sometimes one really does have to wonder why the Universe is so adverse to us camping.

ROW80 Check-in

This hasn’t (as the above might show) been the best week.  I was completely down and out on Sunday and Monday with the cold.  My word count was stifled, but it’s back on track now, and I’m even back to getting my 750 done on 750words.  It’s all part of a process I guess.

The biggest killer at the moment is the brain drain.  Too many other things have been taking their toll and leaving my mind to scattered to actually work on my story ideas.  Today was the first day that I didn’t have to force feed words to the paper, and because I had too many things that needed to be done “right now” I could only jot down notes for writing out in detail later.

I’m both dreading and looking forward to that camping trip just for the end of the “right now” period.  I do know that this was the absolutely wrong month to take up a WriMo challenge.  But I’m here now, and I will do what I can.  I guess it’s much like my karate experiences.  Even in losing, I will win something.

Speaking of which…  Must leave you now so I can do that part.  Hai!

———-

This will be my last post for almost two weeks, if things go well.  If things keep going the way they have been going though….  Well, stay tuned for further developments and enjoy these images I took during our camping trip last year:

Bees Knees

Refelections

Ending Day

 

A Day Late and Very Short: a ROW80 update

Whenever any event that marks a Life Change comes up there seem to be celebrations upon celebrations upon…

If you are anything like me, these events can easily become very expensive.   I don’t mean this as a complaint.  They just have that “feature”, so to speak.

Yesterday was the Boodle’s last day at DS, at least for a while (he has already made his interest in going back clear this past week).  There were gifts around the room for classmates, there were “get together”s, there were plans made for the summer (camps, camps, and more camps), and there were plans for more gatherings during the summer (including a possible All Mom Trip to Montreal).  There was also a delectable dinner out at Villa Valenti.

Swallowtail (credit: Self)

Dinner was the killer.  Next time I will order water instead of my beloved iced tea.  Or at least forgo the refills and the various “possibilities” that come but don’t come with the meal…  It was a great time, and I don’t regret it, but after the nearly $12oo we put on the “new” car yesterday morning so that it might pass inspection once the computer finishes its tests, spending nearly $100 on dinner for the three of us was….  excessive.  It was also extraordinary.

We’ve never done that before.  Never…  in hibachi houses, sushi bars, French Provincial gourmet restaurants or even taking the exchange rate into account for special meals in England and Canada.  And none of us ordered alcohol!

Wow!

I really need to read menus better.  We all do, because the Spice and I weren’t the only parents in our group that ended up staring in shock at our portion of the bill.

Maybe the restaurant charged extra for the fact that our part of 23 people included almost 15 children six and younger… 

No.  I don’t really think so.  The bill was right.  It’s just easier than one might think to get carried away in the great conversation and companionship of friends and simply nod when the waitress says “Would you like a refill?” or “Would you like marinara or one of our other sauces? (and then choose the olive oil and fresh garlic & herbs)”, etc.

It’s easy to not think about these things in the moment.  And, really, we don’t regret the moment (and the leftovers were still amazing!).

Do you have moments that you feel you went “overboard” but don’t regret?

ROW80 Check-in

Since I’ve chosen to take on the June National Novel Writing Month challenge(s).  For myself, this means I’ve hung out a lot on Twitter at the #JuNoWriMo #CampNaNoWriMo and #wordmongering hashtags… a lot!  Today I managed to get some time in with #teamsprinty at the #Row80 hashtag.  You’re reading the efforts of that now.

All of this Tweeting has made me realize how much I need to get Tweetdeck up and running again.  So far everything has worked for me, but it does get crazy at times, and since I’ve volunteered to host some of the #JuNoWriMo sprints for the month, anything to speed up the process will help.

The rest of my ROW80 goals?  Well, I’ve mostly been meeting (and exceeding) my testmile goal of 500 words a day.  I had over 3K on Tuesday, but only squeaked my 750words.com goal by one yesterday.  And all of these are on the story–I am not including the intro “get my head into the writing” words in my totals.    Yay me! 

My sponsor duties have been “okay”.  There is still something odd about the settings on my laptop as opposed to my desktop machine that makes it hard to actually comment on people’s blogs when I’m away from home.  I am almost up to date, but I did not manage to visit any extra ROWers this week yet.    Sorry guys!

My typing in of older stories has fallen completely stopped.  I find no issue with that.  Things go in cycles I have found.  Today I have more energy and focus one activity; tomorrow I can handle another kind of task better.

One thing that has happened brought with it the oddest effect yesterday.  Of late there have been a lot of emails floating around the class-mom list these past few weeks as we all plotted and planned yesterday’s adventures.  On my email signature I have links to my blogs which I often trim out for school and other communiques…  I must have missed doing so.  And I found out yesterday that one of the fellow room-moms had read through some of my stories and actually liked it, enough to mention this yesterday to me,

Wow!

So I’m in a pretty happy frame of mind.  And even more interesting that it happened to me on Day 2 of Jeff Goins 15 Habits of a Great Writer program…  Believe.

So, though I did not get up two hours earlier for writing yesterday (or today…in fact today I lolled in bed for several hours thanks to a generous husband who let me sleep in and daydream)…  I’m starting to actually “believe“.

Good-bye until Sunday, and please, support your fellow ROWers here!

Words… words, words, words

There is a viral photo that makes its way around Facebook and Tumblr and probably every other social media site out there at least once every two or three weeks.  And it’s my turn to share it because it’s really important to me.

Always speak with consideration and purpose

This picture always jerks my heart-strings.  I’ve seen this exact expression on my little boy’s face before.  To my shame, there have been times I put it there.  I sometimes think I need to see this picture at least twice a day as personal penance for what I did to someone who deserves no less than the fullest expression of my love, but often receives my short temper and my frazzled nerves and my mental vacancy.

And because I have had my fair share of years in suffering for the words of others.  No matter how much I was told to “stop being such a baby” or to “grow up” (or the infamous “You think that hurt?  How about this?“–usually followed by some physically violent act), I know which injuries actually hurt the most and the longest.

Yesterday, my son said something on our ride home…  We’d been having a talk on respect because of an incident at school, and I was asking him how he would have felt if his father or I had done the same thing to him so he might hopefully understand how his actions were affecting others.    We seemed to have connected well at the moment, and rather than dwell on the issue, I tried to shift the conversation by pointing out a turtle I saw trying to cross the road in front of us.

“Is he* dead?”

“No.   He’s fine.  But this is a bad time for him to be crossing the road.  There’s a lot of traffic right now.”

“Did you run him over?”

“I was able to go around him, Sweetie.”

“Oh.  I hope the car behind us hits him and he dies.”

I just…  Well, a double take certain happened.  My normally gentle Boodle who still wants to cuddle and hug and sing “You are My Sunshine” with us in his little boy soprano before bedtime–how could he ever want to cause another living creature suffering?  I remembered how much he’d cried when, during a walk one day, we saw a dead rabbit along the road once, and he needed a huge hug.

And so I had to ask him again.  ‘How would he have felt if either his father or I, or any of his school mates, said that about our kitty Stimpy or about one of us….  Did he really think that was a kind thing to say?’

And maybe I tried to make my point too hard, because I saw that expression.  And he woke up last night from a bad dream, because he was sorry that he’d hurt the turtle, and he hoped it didn’t get hit.

Since I didn’t drive him into school today, I didn’t have a chance to see if the turtle did survive.  I confess, I’m rather glad.  What has happened, has happened.  And if I’d driven, I know the Boodle would have asked.  He does things like that.

*Yes, I know the turtle was very likely a female looking for a place to nest, but it seemed silly to argue semantics at the time

Now, for my ROW80 check-in:

Most anything I have to report fits into the SNAFU category.  Nothing particularly wrong.  Stuff is getting done, slowly.  I’ve actually made some great progress on my reading so that’s a bonus I had not expected.  It just feels like things are stagnating.

I’m experiencing a lot of personal resistance to the editing process for Release.  There is a part of myself that so desperately wants to just let the project die, and there is also that part that wants to do something with it.  I’m plying my mental energy on other projects while I try to figure out what I want to do.  I’m starting to think, if I am going to use it, a full rewrite may be in order, as well as a whole restructuring of all three parts of Parvenu (that Release is the first piece of–or rather used to be ).

Beyond that, I could go into specifics about the number of pages typed, the words explored…  Instead, here’s a link to my goals this ROWnd.  I’m ahead of everything except number of words of “new story”, and I’m not too far behind on that, even if it’s all in the wrong story.

So, any other ROWers here?  How’d your week go?

If you aren’t a ROW80 member and would like to see the blogs of some of our other amazing writers, here’s a linky for this check-in.  And here is a link to the main Round of Words in 80 Days for more on this writing challenge.

And lastly, here is one of my favorite Madonna songs: Words  because they DO matter.