Extra Derpy Squid

“Extra Derpy Squid?”

Oh, that’s what Little Boy Darling asked me to type on his computer—not here. Sorry. I'm a double computer typist.

 

I just reviewed my book on line, on a picture that looks like a Kindle, and it appeared to be fine, even the italics came through. This is the second try—I hope nobody saw it the first time around. It was a mess. That day I couldn’t get a review on my computer. Today I did. Yea.

 

 

 

The Noble Art of Living--I wanted that title in the first place, but ended up calling it The God Book. Perhaps the title is presumptuous, I thought, but then so is stating that the words came from whatever you call The Source, The Higher Power, The Universal Consciousness, The Universe, The Great Spirit, God.

 

As you know the word God means many things to many people. Is it Christian, Metaphysical, what? It is confusing, and misleading. I’m dropping it from the title.

 

From The Golden Verses of Pythagoras:

“Lovers of wisdom may be compared to those who at festivals are like spectators, not participating, but at the same time not making external judgments, not buying and selling, not comparing and contrasting, but merely learning what is common to all men, learning something about the noble art of living.” 

 

Christmas is over right?

 

And now it’s Christmas past. Was it all you hoped? Was it fun or was it work? Sometimes it is all those things, a hoped for dream, a family as depicted in Norman Rockwell’s paintings, a hope of getting everything you wanted, at least the first five things on your list. Is it anticipation, like my oldest grandchild who has counted down the days for months?

 We always hope it is grand. I loved ours.

 My little grandson standing beside me now is playing the computer program Minecraft and saying, “I’m trying to get into a ‘Joyful mode.’” He is speaking Minecraft language, but it tickles me to hear him say it, for getting into a joyful mode is what we are all aiming for.

Merry Christmas!

Two days!  Can you believe it's two days until Christmas? Guess I better wrap presents. Guess I better shop. First though I will wish you a Merry Christmas, and you know, “A Happy New Year” goes with that.

My head has been in a muddle this past week. Pixels have been playing havoc with my mind, along with downloads and book covers. Not too much else has managed to get through.

My engineer husband even helped me yesterday, sitting beside me at the desk, paper in hand deciphering a 1.6 ratio, and max of 2,500 x 1563 pixels to download a book cover. I don’t want to bore you with the details.  We just needed to figure it out.

It’s easy once you learn how.

And then it took three computers to finally get the cover and content and 10 million other details decided before Amazon Kindle Publishing would take it. It is in review right this moment and will take up to12 hours to be available. Grandson got up one second after I, palms awash in sweat, pushed the publish button.
 

Last week I read a blog by this title: “I Found $10,000 in my Desk Drawer.”

The story was that an author pulled out an old piece of writing, resold it, and made $10,000.  Maybe it was hype, I don’t know. It doesn’t matter, what matters is that he motivated me.

“I have some old writing,” I said. “It is sitting in my desk drawer."  It was written the day God decided to throw a book in my path, or rather when He (God?) allowed Gabe, my Rottweiler, to dig it up.

At the time I didn’t think this manuscript was long enough for a real book, but an eBook?

It’s perfect.

I listed the price as 99 cents.

A part of The God Book, is fiction—another part is, well, you decide.

The God Book is a small book, about 33 pages of actual text, 12 chapters. God wrote it. I asked the questions.

It will be published on Kindle but, according to Amazon, if you do not have a Kindle you can download it on your PC. Of course, this Christmas for you blog readers I will send a FREE Pdf file if you send me your email address.

Merry Christmas!

Remember how you can have a book lying around for years until one day you decide to read it. “Wow,” you exclaim, “What took me so long?” That’s the way I felt when I re-read The God Book.

As it begins…

The God Book

As I recollect the month was March. Gabe, my Rottweiler, and I took our usual morning walk through the spring forest where mosses succulent as pomegranate seeds lined our path, and above, the morning dew hung like Christmas tree lights on the fir branches. While Gabe Roto-rooted the underbrush searching for whatever dogs search for, I walked lazily along, watching shadows break into sunlight, then back into shadow. Suddenly Gabe began to dig feverishly.

Probably a mouse I thought as I plopped myself on the moss carpet covering the forest floor. I figured whatever he was after would probably escape through its back door, when my big Rottweiler dog, tail wagging in exuberance, did find something.

What he found was not a mouse, a mole, a woodchuck, or any such animal.  It was a book, a small book, shiny black, with a gold ribbon bookmark, sparked by sunlight, dangling from its closed pages.

Strange, there in a forest, not often frequented by anyone except my dog and myself, lay a book as pristine as a new pair of patent leather shoes.  The book was only about three by four inches in size.  The pages were creamy white, and covered with a beautiful cursive written in bronze ink. It was the size someone could slip into their shirt pocket, and it was in perfect condition, not a tear, not a smudge, perfect.  With its few notations it was more like a syllabus, notes a teacher would take to remind her of her subject of the day. The bronze script flowed across the pages so perfectly it would make old handwriting expert Mr. Palmer sit up with a big smile on his face although he was dead and buried long ago. 

The book began thus:

 

“Why am I here?”

I snorted.  Of course, something all humans want to know. Someone’s journal.

The words continued…

And so it started, my day in the forest with an interactive book. I asked the questions, the words appeared.  I couldn’t believe that He/She/God wrote it, but then, dear readers, I will leave that up to you…
 

Fahrenheit 451

“You don’t have to burn books to destroy a culture. Just get people to stop reading them.”

--Ray Bradbury

Bradbury's book Fahrenheit 451 is a visionary parable of a society gone awry in which firemen burn books and the state suppresses learning. Meanwhile, the citizenry sits by in a drug-induced and media-saturated indifference. The temperature of Fahrenheit 451 is the auto ignition of paper.

And then in the book, as with the spirit of humankind, there were rebels who hid in the forest and each person memorized an entire book so as to save it for prosperity.

Bradbury wrote Fahrenheit 451 in 1953, and now in 2013 I hear that people do not read. Yipes.

Oh, people do read, but it doesn’t seem to be books, at least not paper ones.  

One literary agent said she had a dinner companion who bragged that he had not read a book since college.  She vowed to never offer him a dinner invitation, then lamented that there was a time when being well-read was a compliment, a sign of class, something to aspire to.

We still have a Barnes and Noble Bookstore here in Eugene, thank heavens, a place to browse, to drink coffee, to eat a snack, to have restroom facilities—all the comforts of home.

But then maybe I am part of the problem. I do not buy new books as I used to. I buy used or on line. And people look for free eBooks, and 99 cent ones and I can’t blame them.

And then there are the publishing companies.  I actually sold a few books, It’s Hard to Stay on a Horse While You’re Unconscious. It shocked me to have some sell, for I had about given up on them.  (I’m better off selling on eBay.)  What shocked me further was that while Xlibris collected $1,723.55 from the sales of my book, they owe me $56.92.

A friend informed me that he saw a bookstore on TV that contained no books, only electronic renditions of them. Now that is scary, if the would-be book-burners wanted digital books to be gone, it would only take a key stroke.

What are we doing?

On the other hand…

Remember this my dear people who read my blog, and who are the creators of a new day.

We are the voice of creation, we speak and songs ring out.

We wave our hands and buildings spring up.

(Well, it’s almost like that.)

So I’m suggesting this:  Write your life story as a fabulous fairy tale. It is like changing the radio dial from terrible to fabulous—although sometimes we do not make a quantum jump, but move incrementally, so move your dial incrementally…
 

P. S. It’s colder than it ought to be around here—a far cry from our days in Hawaii. About every hour, I have to replenish the chicken water for in the last hour it froze. My friend said that the hummingbirds sit on the rim of their feeder waiting for her to refill it.

 

Iced tips on tree behind our back fence

 

I live to delight.

Look more delighted damn it.

--Tad Williams

The Sun Will Come Out Tomorrow

Want to know about my life?

No?

Okay.

Well, how about, let’s say, two days? Then I will stop.

After Grandson and I  had taken Momma to work, after we had breakfast at Elmers, after we drove out of town to an old Christmas tree farm where I used to buy trees, hoping Grandson Dear would nap as he gotten about 5 hours sleep, we found the trees to be a forest. After that we drove to the Christmas tree lot one-half mile from our house.

There a lovely lady sold us a Noble fir for $10 less that it ought to be, and grandson cruised the lot  about 50 times, smelled the trees, got rosy cheeks from the brisk winter air—not autumn air, winter air, as it has turned artic around here.  We loaded the tree into the pickup, climbed into the cab, and jacked the heat up to Momma Bear.

And then came that car seat again,  a resistant child, my inaptitude with the buckles and getting a limp child strapped in. “Okay,” I said, “We’ll stay here until you are ready to get into the seat.”

We were toasty warm, the heater outlet was hot enough to make coffee proven by the temperature of our drinking water. Grandson horsed around for about two hours, ate left-over pancakes, played with the coins in the ashtray, I read about 15 pages of Dean Knootz’s Odd Thomas to him—nothing gross. He was fascinated that Odd said nothing would happen until the cow exploded. (Horrors) Grandson moved onto more play, and I read “How to Write Action Screenplays,” until I was fried.

The trouble was we overstayed our time, and getting home neither of us could get to the bathroom fast enough. Grandson ran into the house letting the dogs out into the front yard where I had to corral them. Peaches had used a Puddle pad because we were gone so long, (she was still asleep when we left)—I removed that. I chased down Grandson before he climbed on anything wet as he was. I changed the cat litter box, that the cat used again before I got the litter outside. I threw myself into the bathtub, and then had to wait for the dog outside as she was having digestive problems. I stood in the artic air with a towel wrapped around my wet hair and observed that Circus performers only have to keep five plates spinning…

 And come evening as I drove to pick up his mother,  Grandson, strapped in that that drives-me-crazy car seat,  fell asleep.

And now today, Friday—snow! Everything is white, and the curb has all but disappeared. Grandson ran around as excited as an otter on a creek-bank, with Bear running a close second. I do believe that  snow is a Newfoundland dog’s natural habitat.

The trouble is we have no snow clothes. I have rubber boots, but Grandson has none, so he was stuck with sneakers, and the jacket loaned from Auntie mysteriously found its way back home, so we stacked on sweaters, and with no gloves, we used socks that didn’t work well on a four-year old.

The excitement warmed him for a while as we slid, ran, played, poked, while dogs sniffed out the new landscape over to the pond where duckies swam on slush and Grandson reached his limit. He said he had never been so cold in his entire life.

We beat-feet back home, threw aside wet clothing, and made French toast the way his mother used to make in Hawaii, We melted butter atop the toast until it ran like syrup, sprinkled, no poured on, powdered sugar, and then came the good part. We squeezed a fresh lime until it pooled juice and soaked up the sugar and the butter into a sugary sloppy topping fit for a Prince. Not quite as good and our limes taken from best lime-tree-in-the-world in Hawaii, but it ran a close second.

Four years ago on December 1 we left Oregon, pursued Hawaii, then California, now we are back in Oregon, and now daily I bow to the goddess of central  heating…

View of the yard (Yard?) and street.


 

The below plant will burst into glorious azalea fuchsia blossoms come spring...hope for the future.

 

 

The sun will come out tomorrow, oh, tomorrow's today.

 

 

Which way mom?

 

 

P.S. If you want to read about a better writer than me go to http://www.thebestdamnwritersblogontheblock,blogspot.com

However, I'll own up to it, it's my blog.

Fowl Play

“Meet at the church on 7^th between the hours of 5:30 and 7:00. Bring money.”

It was a turkey-deal.

I had to laugh after the fowl drama we had been having, for after I ordered a thanksgiving turkey grass fed, organic, and a 4H project, he didn’t show up. So on Thanksgiving eve I drove into town to a Natural Grocery and bought another. Not quite the purity of the first but good.

At 7:30 I figured my turkey lady was a no show.

At 8:00 she called to tell me she was running late and had been out of cell range.

Whoops. I hope she has a big freezer.

As for the fowl at-home. I saw an “Eggs for sale” sign, and figured—wise deducer that I am—that she had chickens. I drove to her house and met the most wonderful woman.  At first she wasn’t interested in having another rooster, since she had three already, but decided she would take him, plus my hens if I had to part with them. "The other roosters might beat him up," she said, "but I'll watch out for him." She called two days ago and told me he was doing fine.”

What a woman! I loved meeting her.

Last Monday I visited the City Hall to ask about keeping my two back-yard hens. They said that if anyone complains they would send someone to my house, and give me a warning. Then I would have to handle it.

I left believing that my neighbor would complain. BUT, as I entered my driveway about one half hour later, there she was, apologizing if she had hurt my feelings and said she wouldn’t complain if I kept them from smelling.

Quite an about face.

All’s well that ends well.

Thus ends my chicken saga.

 

 

 

 

"Hey look, we're back in the laundry room where we sat under a heat lamp as peeps."

And now my book saga:

I’m thinking of re-naming my book, Don’t Tell Mommy, making a new cover, and publishing it on Amazon.com. If I had done that in the first place I would have saved a ton of money, and the Amazon.com site allows the author to change the title, cover, and do some dinking with the content. Wow.

I feel the old cover and title is too titillating and does not sufficiently honor the woman who innocently wrote the majority of the letters printed in the book—my mother.

The new title will be

Two Sides

A mother’s dream / A daughter’s secret

A book of Letters

My mysterious book site not completed, no picture is http://www.jewelld.net