One of those days

It was a great morning until I looked outside and saw the blanket of white coating everything. Not enough to be called a snowfall but just enough the dogs are able to get their paws nice and muddy to track through the house. Of course the Chihuahua sees white and runs the other way.

I'm having a bad day with the joints. Everything decided to complain the second I got up. It wouldn't have been so bad except the head is pinging just to add more fun. I probably shouldn't have gone out in the cold wind yesterday. The ever changing pressure is a little hard for the head to handle. One minute sun, the next is snow and rain. All I want is serious fish pond time this summer and if all of this up and down weather leads to fish pond days, I'll grin and bear it.

Hubby was at a info meeting for a product his store sells. It happened to be for ponds. Hubby was telling the sales rep how I at first didn't want the pond and proceeded to live by it for the entire summer. Hubby said if he has a stressful day, he heads straight for the pond during the summer to sit and relax. The Sales Rep started to laugh and say that he and his wife were the same with theirs. Kind of nice to know that we aren't the only ones daffy about our pond. I think the best thing about it is, I can truly relax or get totally absorbed in my writing without worrying if the Beagle wanders off I won't need to clean up the wake of his destruction.

I do have some news to share, my novella that I wrote, was released yesterday. Its a sweet story so everybody can read it. (Apparently I still need to work on my blogging techniques as I was hoping the picture would appear right about ...Here.) Its dedicated to my parents whose love story is pretty remarkable except the dedication didn't get printed with the book cause I normally add that during the editing process. Now I know to add it at the beginning. Hey its a learning process.

The coolest thing happened with this cover art. I was showing it to a friend at my mom's. She in turn was showing it to her mother-in-law who was there as well. My mom was telling her that I wrote in erot... then turned and asked the category that I wrote in. She couldn't remember the word, but as soon as I said, erotica, she said, that's right, as if I had said mystery. She was so cute. I just want her with me when the first book deal comes along. It would be really cool to share that with her. Of course, if leads to a book signing outside a sex shop, I'll take Artist with me. My mother would come up with too many outlandish schemes. Thrusting Thighs was one of her suggestions as a character for a novel. Trust me, with my mother's imagination, it gets a whole lot worse. At least now, I know where I get it from.

I can feel the sneaking up of the sub-conscious telling me to get the synopsis done for the hopefully above to happen. I'll confess, I'm procrastinating. avoiding it and coming up with what ever else to do before facing it. But its hanging over my head like a cloud. Its in my thoughts as to how I'm going to tell a story without telling the story. But I should get it done. Hubby has been gently nagging at me to finish it. He's right, then I can get to the others that are rolling in my head. I know that if I get the ideas down the stories will formulate themselves. But a synopsis is different, its taking three hundred pages and condensing it down to five or six. Of course I wasn't smart and kept my outlining notes. The next one I will. Hopefully it will make the task easier.

Damn! My coffee cup is empty. Guess this means I'd better fill it. Sigh, but at least the dishes that need doing will give me ten more minutes of procrastination.

Kitchen Fever

I had visions of getting up Easter morning, making coffee, frying the bacon for the Hot Cross buns I made last night. Having breakfast in bed with the dogs lazying around us and the sun streaming through our windows. Put a bubble around that and prick it with a pin. I won't get into the gory details but its sufficient to say that the above fuzzy warm vision from my mind did not happen.

Instead it has been a battle of wills with the canine creatures of this household. I have made a discovery this morning that Beagles are the equivalent of a Canine Donkey. They both bray, both are stubborn and both can be led by a carrot.

Mind you I will say one thing about the Beagle, at least he avoids the muck and mire in the backyard. He hates getting his paws muddy. The Airedale and the CorgieX on the other hand I swear seek them out then run through the mud at least five times ensuring the muck will be tracked in. I could grow a garden with what gets tracked in. Have you met Bleach? Its my new best friend. My mop is threatening to go on strike with the overtime its been putting in. I don't dare put the laundry out until things have dried up. I envision my greyish white sheets with mud splatters from the dogs galloping by.

I was looking around my kitchen as I was kneading the dough last night and a memory came from a deep recess of my mind. I had to have been very little because my Grandmother who was a very tiny woman, (she weight 98lbs when she married my grandfather and was four feet eleven inches in height) seemed so big to me. She was baking something and pulled up a chair for me to help her. She opened a drawer and there was a rolling pin just my size. The kitchen was long and narrow with huge cupboards. Sometimes when I'm baking bread (its always bread for some reason) I can sense her. I realised last night that everything I want to do to the kitchen if very reminiscent of that kitchen from her house.

In the middle of the summers here I love to walk into my mother's kitchen early in the morning. It smells like my Nona's kitchen and there was always aromatic smells wafting from the windows. But its a certain combination of the scent of coffee, the promise of the heat in the cool of the morning and a linger of something baked. It was a homey smell. I think because we moved so much, my Nona's house was a rock. She was always there. At Easter time she would send up Scallili, (Sp?) a deep fried Italian cookie dripping in Honey. I used to look so forward to it. In someways it was so much more anticipated than the chocolate.

No wonder my kitchen is so important to me. Its like my zen room. I can pound out frustrations on the bread, contemplate the meaning of life as I'm washing dishes or reminisce as I'm stirring a sauce. With everything Hubby is planning, I'm now nagging that we arrange the room so it will be a practical room. Right now, everything is haphazard as it was all just a temporary solution. The purple cupboard is getting to me now along with the too high green counter with no space, and the one that isn't anchored down cause it was supposed to be makeshift. I'm really sick of makeshift after 10 years.

Its just cabin fever ranting combined with an itch to clean out everything but can't until the ground has dried out. Or it could be that Hubby never seems to work anymore. This week alone he has had four days off. I finally asked him if he still had a job or was this the company's polite way of letting him go. He says he still has a job.

Well the coffee cup is empty and that cannot happen in this house. A full cup of coffee is necessary for the creative energies to flow...Why do I hear Artist laughing at me inside my head...Okay... how about I'm a caffeine addict that can't be more than four feet away from the coffee pot or things get really ugly around here? Yup, that got rid of the voice from down the street cackling at me. My daughter informed me that Artist and I cackle. I told her to remember who cackles and not to mess with us lest I pull out my wand.

Remember, girls giggle, women can't be bothered, we outright laugh.

Happy Easter Everyone.

Spring has sprung...

And apparently doggie poop is what springs up in my yard. Not as bad as previous years but still it means my getting outside and begin the clean up. I can't wait. Seriously, I am itching to get started on our yard and garden.

Scribble, and Rhode, here's one to put a big grin on your faces. Artist will just have to bear with the repeat.

Hubby went on a course, last Thursday with another fellow from work who is the seed manager. Hubby tells me, emphatically and aggressively that Seed Man said there are no organic seeds available. There are only three seed companies in North America and they all have the altered seeds. I answered, that a grocery store here in town was offering certified organic seeds. "No they had to have been Altered, Seed Man said you can't get them, he's tried." Here came the raging bull. Cause I said organic seeds could be found. So the argument ensued. And yeah, he was mad. I finally said "You can't tell me that somebody who wants to start farming organically can't get the seeds." He shot back with "Why do you have to be so argumentative?" I hit him with "Why do you have to be so negative."

So to prove me wrong he jumps online. What comes up but "Parkdale Organic and Heirloom Seeds" I heard a very quiet "Oh" coming from the Hubby as I left the room. Yeah, that was a pretty big ouch. Not only was I right, but I proved both Hubby and Seed Man wrong. Hows that for hitting two birds with one stone?

He's still smarting. I know because now, what ever I want for seeds, I can get. He's not saying a word. He told his mother last night about it and I called out saying that I would fill her in on the details later. That was met with a glare. Hey, if your dumb enough to back some idiot at work, to your wife no less, then be prepared for the gloating.

Its a really good thing the man loves me.
That reminds me, I should fire off an email to Park whatever seeds and thank them. After my coffee.

Victory Garden?

How I love my Hubby. Let me count the ways. He is driving me insane these last few days. the other night he came home in a flap about an article he read in Macleans on the food shortages coming up and how beef is going to be at $23.00 a pound in in Canada. According to the article places like Australia are already in a crisis. One of the reasons is because China is demanding the North American Diet.

Okay, now I remember the same scare in the nineties and eighties. My mother said it was also in the seventies. My problem with the article is this; They splash theis huge alarmist promo on the front cover then you have to hunt for the article of five pages which is all doomsay. What ticked me off was the fact the articles surrounding this huge feature (that you have to find) are on the Oscars, a broke Canadian Actor and of course children who are taught a blood sport as a means of fighting. The article that really slayed me was on the coffee beans of Brazil. In the event of a food shortage you would think that how Brazil makes lousy coffee and grows the finest would be moot point.

So in light of this we are putting in a garden. farmer Brown that I married has never done a lick of gardening in his life. How to I know this, because growing up, Hubby spent his time with his Dad in the sawmill. I have the added advantage of listening to his mother who commented that she never had help with the garden with the exception of the odd daughter. So with this in mind we trudge along planning out everything. Of course I have no storgae, my freezer is only the top foot and a half of my fridge and no cold room or storage but hey, we are to grow a garden. this is of course, surmising that we will actually grow something.

The results will be interesting to say the least. That is if our marriage survives the forray into gardening. Or the blog as he sits and reads it.

It will make for an interesting summer. They way I look at it, I will providing my mother and other gardeners with plenty of entertainment. I'm looking forward to that one tomatoe and leaf of spinach. but hey, at least I will be able to say, look what I grew.