Give Me A High Five!

I did it. I finished my novel. Now all I have to do is go through it one last time for a typo check and other small tweakings. I'm psyched. I started this book about 4-5 years ago. It was so different from what I normally write that it's taken me a long time to get it just right. Now to sell it. Any takers?

'THE SUMMER OF DIRT

If 1969 was the Summer of Love, then 2006 is the Summer of Dirt.

Let me share the differences and comparisons:

1. The Summer of Love had mud. I just have dirt. But with a little water, I could make mud.

2. Lots of people attended the Summer of Love and they did a lot of grooving. There is no one helping me, so I'm not grooving .

3. There were real good live tunes in 1969. All I have is an old boom box.

4. People at the Summer of Love were very dirty. Well, so am I, but unlike them, I can take a shower. (This is a real plus.)

5. People saw lots of weird stuff at Woodstock. Stuff that didn't exist. Well, I'm seeing weird stuff, but unfortunately, it exists.

6. I didn't get to participate at the Summer of Love. But I am participating in the Summer of Dirt.

7. You had to pay to get into the Summer of Love. Yeah, I'm paying. My neck hurts, my back hurts, and my feet hurt. Unfortunately, I don't feel that I'm getting my money's worth.


Other than that, there really are no similarities. It's hot. It's dirty. And it will end.

But, in all truthfulness, this is what I have accomplished (with help from one friend) in 9 days:

My backyard is pruned, heavily.
Front yard is almost done.
Garage is cleaned
All closets in house are cleaned.
Windows are done, in and out.
Floors are clean.
Bathrooms are done.
Laundry room is cleaned.
All laundry is clean.
All drycleaning is at the dry cleaners.
Family room is spotless.
Kitchen is spotless.
All doors, molding, and door frames are clean.


And, I worked on my novel some.

This is all good.

On Being An Author

Well, it's great to be an author. Greater yet are the misconceptions the public has about its authors. But fear not. I am here to dispell them today.

1. All authors are famous.

Hahahahaha! I wish. Most authors are unknown and obscure. You have to search through four hundred gazillion books at B&N just to find their book, if it's even there. Oh, can't find it? Well, it can always be ordered if you want to wait 10 days, in which time you'll probably have moved on to some other book.

But I desire to be famous. Does that count? I'd love to get a call from someone that my book has been reviewed in the NY Times. Is that enough? Probably not. But the simple fact that it would be ok with me if I became famous may be enough to project me right into famousness.

2. All authors make a lot of money.

Hahahahahaha! I wish. Most authors make less than $10,000 a year at writing. We wish we were rich. We really could use the money. I'd like to pay off my van before I die, so a little money would be good.

Ok, I admit it. I like money. I'd like to not only pay off my van, but also my house. A huge wardrobe of boutique clothes would be nice. I could do that with about $5000 in hand. Or maybe I could buy a Mercedes. Yeah, that would be nice. And a bigger house. Maybe a yacht. I like yachts. And, I love to travel.

3. All authors are bestsellers.

Hahahahahaha! I wish. If they publish 50,000 books a year, maybe 100 make the bestseller list. Maybe a few more, I don't know. But I do know that the 50,000 don't make it.

But I dream about being on the bestseller list. I don't care which one because I'm not a picky author. Really, I'm not. You can put me on any list and I'll be happy. Even the list from my hometown paper with a readership of 1,000. That's fine. I'll take what I can get.

Now here are some things about authors you may not know:

1. Authors are brilliant people.

This is very true. We are the best and the brightest. We also have a great sense of humor and God know, the world needs it. It also needs our great intellect and most of all, it needs our ability to sort out what life is really about. We're good at that.

While we're on the topic of brilliance, I once mentioned to my husband that I want this written on my gravestone: "She was brilliant and fascinating." He laughed at me. Can you imagine? Here I was expressing one of the greater desires of my heart and the guy falls down into a weeping mound of humor. The nerve!

2. Authors are special people.

Yes, that's true, too. We are special. My mother told me when I was very little that I was special and I've gotten a lot of mileage out of that. Come on, folks, it ain't easy to write a book. You have to be pretty special to do that. Besides, we value specialness in this culture. The more special you are, the better. No one wants to be ordinary. And we're not.

Besides, my dog thinks I'm special. He likes to sit on my feet and look up at me with adoring eyes. If the rest of the world would just get onboard!

3. Authors have very big egos.

Nah, that's not true. Skip that one.

4. Authors are gods.

Yeah, a lot of people think that. Isn't it great? There are so many myths about writing, publishing, and authorship that authors reach near godlikeness in the minds of many people. Keep it up folks. This works for me.

Besides, you really do need godlike qualities to finish a novel. It isn't easy work, people. All that world building, character building, narrative tension. You think this comes out of the mortal mind? NO, it does not. This comes out of the minds of gods. If it was so easy to write a book, everyone would be doing it.

Oh, wait. Everyone is. I take that back.

Well, that's it for my brilliance today. I have to get back to cleaning my garage.

A Joke A Day

I promised one of my former co-workers that I'd post a joke a day, just for him. Well, I have failed. I'm on day six and I haven't said anything funny in all that time. It's a tragedy, I know, but he'll have to live with it. After all, do I owe him a joke a day just because I promised it? Nah, I wouldn't go that far. Do I desire to say something funny? Sure I do. But it's so danged hot that I can't get the humor engine going. (Blogspot won't let me make paragraphs again today. What is wrong with this danged program?) But anyway, if I was going to be funny, what might I talk about? Let us ponder this a moment. Here are some ideas: What is this picture about on the left? Is it about being different? Having a nice chest? Sweating a lot? You know, I don't know where I got this picture but it was in my "My Pictures" folder and it was the best I could come up with on short notice. I don't have a hidden file of clever pictures for moments like this. I wish I did because if I did, I'd post one and then my former co-worker and his cronies could chuckle while they slave away and I'm not there. Hahahahah!

Ok, so I promise to think of something funny. I'm just so involved in cleaning right now that I can't be funny. Cleaning is a very serious business. Filth is nothing to laugh at. That's right, Kit, it's nothing to laugh at.

But, if in the meantime you need a chuckle, read down to the post where I was trying to sell my husband. That is worth revisiting. Or send me some kind of prompt, something that will get the juices going. Or wait.

Why I Hate Work

Because it's work!

Meet my garage. Nice, huh? And this is after a whole van load of crap went to the dump. This is an improvement. Actually, it's a major improvement. You can now get past the exercise equipment and get to the door. That's good, because now you can get in the house which is needful sometimes.

Ok, back to work. I hate work. Actually, I have this love/hate relationship with work. I hate being bored, but I hate work. If I could find that nice medium where I wasn't bored but I wasn't working, I think I'd be in Nirvana. Does such a place exist? Nah. Not on your life.

Well, it's time for the ceremonial cleaning of the garage. That time in the decade when you open the door and part of the crap falls from the garage into your house and you just know that you have put off work for a little bit too long. And now, instead of a nice little job, you have a big old hummer on your hands. Whoopie!

So, off I go. Separating out the crap from the good stuff. The record player for 1981 must go. The three dead computers are staying along with the monitors and keyboards. Just can't let them go. All the clothes my kids saved from elementary school are out of here, but the toys stay. They could be worth money someday.

The bikes? I just don't know yet. The tires we bought and never put on the car...well, they are probably rotten by now, so they're going. What about all that crap on the shelves? Going. That's where I'll put the computers.

What I dread the most is cleaning out the kids' stuff. They have this habit of bagging stuff up and throwing it in the corner near the bikes. Bags and bags of stuff that probably will cause them heart failure if I throw it out, but, oh, well. Such is life.

Is there anything funny about cleaning a garage? No, there is not. I cannot come up with one funny remark about cleaning out this mess. I'm happy, though, that I'll be able to get to and open my freezer again. I haven't done that in two years and I know there's food in there somewhere. I'm happy I found the chainsaw. I have a few things I'd like to hack up, but that means more yard work, so maybe not. I'm also happy to see the three dead vacuums I bought at yard sales. No more of that! And all the beach floaties. I need them for my vacation.

No, folks, this is not fun. It's 90 degrees out and I'm sorting crap in my garage. Nothing pretty about that.

Meet My Filthy Closet

Life imitates art. Or does art imitate life? It's hard to say. In this case, I would say that my filthy closet is a symbol of life imitating art because this closet represents the last ten years of my life. We moved in ten years ago from tomorrow, an auspicious day to say the least.

We were making life changes. Downsizing when downsizing was a nice way of saying that we just couldn't afford to live the way we were. We came out of a big new house and moved into a smaller older house that needed major remodeling which we did over the course of about 9 years.

And all the while, I kept throwing things in my closet. Things I had no space for. Things I didn't know what to do with. Things that no one wanted. Pocketbooks. A steam cleaner. Christmas ornaments that were never to be found again. An expensive raincoat I bought in a thrift store when I had no money. I never wore it, but there it sits.

It is also packed with Christmas wrapping paper I forgot about the day I put it there. Old gloves that were never to be found again. Boxes. Comforters. Stuff.

And over the years, I kept piling stuff in, as if getting them out of sight would get them out of mind. And it did. And then one day I couldn't shut the door. Not another coat could fit in the danged closet and it was time to clean it out.

As I pulled each thing out, I realized that they represented a time in my life when I was too preoccupied with my own demons to do much about anything else around here. My sister was sick and dying. I was in a bad car accident and didn't walk so well for a few years. The trauma of my own childhood came flooding in on me one day and grabbed me by the throat until I'd listen and let it out. And I kept packing those things in the closet.

But as I pulled them all out yesterday, I realized that the demons are gone and it's a good reason to clean things up and start new.

That is what I'm doing this summer. I'm starting anew.

What I'm Doing On My Summer Vacation

Well, I quit my job and I am home for the summer with my trusty dog and other assorted animals including Napoleon the frog and Lloyd Christmas my gerbil (see picture below). Also have an offspring here with me. She hasn't offered to help me clean the place up because I think she has an allergy to cleaning or some kind of evil aversion to cleaning solutions.

Anyway, when you think of me, picture me sitting under that tiny little umbrella on my patio. The green and white one that you can hardly see. I spend a lot of time there. Yesterday I started reading UNLESS, a book I ordered in 2003 because I was hot to read it. Obviously, not THAT hot, but I got to it in less than three full years, so I'm doing good.

I really like this book. I'd call it reflective fiction. I like that style. It's about a woman whose daughter of 19 has taken up sitting on a street corner in Toronto holding a sign that says "GOODNESS". She lives in a shelter, won't come home, won't talk to her parents and I don't know why yet. But the poor mother is reflecting upon her life, and also, of course, the loss of her eldest daughter.

My eldest is nineteen. I can't imagine losing her to a street corner. Or anything else, for that matter.

But what I really like about this book is the whole reflective thing. Not lots of action going on here. The main character is just thinking her way through her days, probably the way I would if my daughter had taken off for a street corner. I think this is the kind of novel I'd like to write next, when I finish the one I haven't touched in 7 months. I may get to it this summer after I'm doing cleaning the house and pruning the yard. That's about 2 more weeks of work and then I can get back to my writing.

I've had a love/hate relationship with writing. I love to write. I hate to have to produce. I hate that I don't write the kind of stuff that sells like M&M's and soda pop on a hot day. You know, flavor of the month stuff. Lots of that out there. But I love it that I write about deep issues that mean something to me. To each his own, I guess.

Anyway, I'm living in my big shirt and my capris. I look like hell. My hands are dirty. The house is looking better. How did I ever let it get this bad? I think it was the 7 years of writing 12 hours a day most days, 7 days a week. I forgot that I had a life. I got that life back last year and now I am catching up.

So think of me.

It's a dog's life...

Meet Moose. Friendly companion, loyal buddy.

The Ceremonial Bringing Out of the Blower

Lloyd Christmas Watches as I Play With My Blower













(No hamsters were hurt, injured, or tested upon in mean and evil ways during in the making of this blog!)

Nothing signifies nor celebrates the arrival of summer more than the bringing out of the Toro Leaf, Dirt, Rock, and Dead Rose Heads Blower. It is a proud moment, one which I experience early every warm season with great pride and hilarity. Usually the blower is hidden somewhere in the hinterland of my garage, behind some garbage bags filled with old clothes or perhaps behind some dead computer. It can even be found behind my freezer which now acts like a shelf for the carpet that never made it into bedroom number three, the Christmas ornaments, and the chainsaw. But this year was different. In a stroke of genius, I decided last fall during the Ceremonial Taking Back of the Blower to leave it on the patio to see if it could survive the torrents of a Seattle winter. And alas, it did. But I'm getting ahead of myself. My blower has been sitting on the patio all winter and every time I looked out upon it, I would wonder with great concern if it had the strength to make it through the Rain Festival called Winter without rusting or blowing a gasket. And like I said, it did. I will insert a picture here __________ when I find my digital camera which is also hiding somewhere beneath something. It is a little dirty (the blower that is). The front blower thingie did fall off when I began my blow, but it snapped back on real nicely. And away I went. (Since blogspot won't let me add paragraphs today for some dumb reason, you're going to have to read all of this in block form. Sorry.) Anyway, I began my seasonal blowing to rid my patio or every dead maple leaf and every piece of dirt that has fallen or blown in since September. It was exhilarating, really. That was amplified only by the fact that today is my last day of work for a while and although I am not allowed to wear shoes without socks, I'm living dangerously today and going for sockless sandals. It's amazing how empowering a blower can be, but now that my patio is clean and my life is on track, I'm feeling very exhilarated. Next I'm going to clean out the hall closet. Stay tuned.