Fruiting Seasons

Not this past spring, but the spring before, I bought a new nectarine tree, and planted it.

This year it produced a ton of fruit. The fruits are small; we really could have thinned the tree out much more savagely, and I'm not convinced that the poor creature is getting as much water as it should.
Today I went out to swim with the granddaughter of the house, and when I went to the deep end of the pool to dive in, I noticed a small dried-up nectarine on the ground. I started testing the fruit, and found that many (but not all) of the nectarines were ready. I bit into one and got a very big surprise.

I'd bought this tree to replace the one I'd ordered from Stark's nursery catalog (I was going to link but the bastards don't have a website), which was the worst-tasting excuse for nectarines I've ever found. The label on this little tree said that the fruit was known for intense flavor. Yes, intense nectarine flavor is what I was hoping for.

And it is very tasty ... but the label didn't mention that this was a white-fleshed nectarine. Not my favorite. Luck is with my husband, however, who prefers the white-fleshed nectarines to the yellow ones. The granddaughter loves them, too. She and I went out and picked a big bowl of them to chill.

Both the granddaughter and the neighborhood mockingbirds are already after the seedless pearlette grapes, too, even though they won't be fully ripe for another few weeks. Some of them are ripe enough to taste good, some are bitter as only unripe grapes can be. It warmed my old-time scavenger's heart the other day to see Lil out in the back yard filching grapes without a worry in the world.

But today, after we discovered the nectarines, we swam and played in the pool until I was worn out (she wasn't, of course), and when we had harvested our fruit, we rewarded ourselves by jumping into the pool again.

Ah, summer!

Horse Teeth

Today started with me sliding out of bed like a slug, oozing across the floor, and pumping tea into my system so that I could be out at the ranch. I knew I ought to be there.

My friend Cathy the Mad Horsewoman's older horse has been losing weight. It could be because he's an old dude, it could just be his time coming on, but I knew from watching him eat that he needed his teeth floated.

Horses' teeth grow unevenly, and they wear unevenly. Older horses' teeth sometimes wear SO unevenly that they can no longer chew their food well enough to digest it properly. I'd watched the old horse chew up a carrot and have half of it fall out because his teeth weren't grinding it up and holding it to swallow. He's such a good horse, too, a retired ranch horse who has an unusual horse mentality -- he's a workin' dawg, and even though he's old, he wants to show the world that he still knows exactly what to do.

My horse, Dink, the Stinky Dink if you want to be precise, was underweight his first winter we had him. He'd been a paddock horse and had no idea how to graze, but even when he figured out you have to eat all the oat grass, not just the tips, he was losing weight and becoming gaunt. A "horse person" suggested that we have his teeth floated. We did, and the little snothead got fat as a tick in no time.

"Floating" is a funny term. It means filing the horse's teeth down so that they can meet and chew and grind food. The vet drugs the shit out of the horse, uses a variety of methods to hold the horse's mouth open, and has at the teeth with something that can reduce the teeth to evenness. When Dink was done, dear old Doc Boero (God forgive him for suiciding) took a big-ass rasp to his teeth. Today, young blonde pretty Dr. Janeway (not making that up) used a long armed power sander to even the old horse's teeth.

I learned from reading the James Herriot books what floating teeth involved. But Cathy the Mad didn't know. So I went out to help her get through it. I'm glad I did. She was a bit freaked. We, when we think of dentistry, think of finesse and novocaine. Horses don't have nerves in their teeth, so the vet just thinks of "Get in there and saw off the high points." A bit unnerving.

It's done now, and I hope the old horse gets good and fat and fit and lasts another 10 years.

Day Trip to the City

Tuesday, we celebrated Bernie's birthday a couple days early and went to San Francisco for the day.

We had the usual leisurely lunch at Sinbad's (the best calamari tempura we've ever tasted, of course), sipping wine, watching the bay and the bar patrons (men in expensive suits having liquid lunches) and drinking in the sweet air of the bay. (The restaurant keeps doors and windows open, flies and mosquitoes being too declassee for SF.)

From there, we hopped a streetcar and went to Pier 39 to see the flower arrangements. Bernie was taken with a barrel of clarkia, their white ruffles dominating the planting. I got a couple good macros of them, and a number of shots of other plants there, but you'll have to go to Flickr to see the rest.


Walking around on Pier 39, we saw a kid hanging over a railing on the upper storey, with a seagull on the little overhang below, screaming at him. The bird wasn't begging, though, the calls were angry and warning. Suddenly we saw why: babies!

I had never seen a baby seagull before and was stricken by how unbelievably CUTE they look. They're fuzzy, and spotted. How on earth do they grow up to be such unutterable raucous rude squawking crap machines?

















Finally, we went on to the Aquarium of the Bay, and spent a long time in the underwater aquarium tunnel, watching a horde of anchovies. If I was Bill Gates, I'd have an anchovy aquarium in some room, with a sitting room beneath it.

Keeping It Up

Yesterday I had not a single minute for writing, the first day in a long, long time that I didn't get to that kind of creative effort.

However, I did make this little graphic for a 2-year-old's birthday card. It was fun, and didn't take too long, about which is the cool part: I've learned enough to pull something like this out of the hat with a minimum of swearing!

Transformations

On the Fourth of July, I staggered out of the bedroom with one thought only: hot tea.

However, before I reached the kitchen, Alex and Lillian waylaid me, enthusiastically telling me I MUST see the wonder of the age NOW!

And when I saw it, I forgot about tea for a while and instead grabbed my camera and was privileged to have a photoshoot of a dragonfly that had just emerged from the shell of its nymph stage.

Dragonfly nymphs live underwater for over a year, dodging fish, growing, and shedding their skin from time to time. Then when the time is right, they respond to some biological signal, and climb out of the water.

This one climbed up the wall beside our front door and clung there, safe from predators, but not from paparazzi. Poor patient creature, it gripped its old shell, its abdomen slowly stretching from a lumpy blunt mass to a long, graceful body.

My camera has a low-light setting, fortunately, because the porch is in full shade in the mornings, but so that we could assure ourselves of some good pictures, we brought out a flashlight, and on macro setting, got some spectacular views.

One of the most dramatic of these is the Peek of the Week over at the Piker Press.

Not only is the transformation from nymph to adult an amazing thing to see happen right outside one's front door, but also a stunning validation of the success of our water habitat in the fish pond off the front porch.

We have often watched dragonflies skimming over the little pond, marveled at the one year the wasps had an population explosion and frequented the pool for water, and caught a great egret stalking the remaining fish (the dastardly villain ate all but one of the named fish), but this year has been a triumph, as we discovered five baby fish swimming with the big guys ... and now this creature, grown in the waters of a front yard fish pond.

In this second side shot, you can see how much longer the abdomen of the bug has become. And still the creature hung there, unmoving. After a while, I saw two water droplets fall from the abdomen, dropping ballast, I suppose, getting ready for the aerodynamics of flight.

I can't remember a time when I wasn't fascinated by dragonflies (and damselflies, too). There was a small lake about twenty minutes from where I lived called Zook's Dam; I loved visiting there in the summer, seeing the bluegills beneath the water lilies, the dragonflies lighting on top of the flowers.

Over the course of the morning of the Fourth of July, we went to the porch again and again to see how "our" dragonfly was getting along. I took dozens of photos, most of which were blurred in the dim light, and the awkward way I had to position the camera.


I didn't want to risk touching the insect with the close-focus lens -- emergence from the husk (called an "exuvia", by the way) leaves the bug very soft and vulnerable. If it tried to fly away too soon, one of our scrub jays would find it and eat it in seconds.

At last, on one of our visits, we saw that the dragonfly had unfolded its wings and held them out to the side. The abdomen was thinner, the color of the body darker. The time was at hand.

And then the bug was gone, and I was able to get very close in with my lens and take a picture of the exuvia.


Little filaments were visible, but I was not able to find a single reference on the web to tell me what they were.

The husk is still on the wall outside the door, a reminder of the fantastic "birth" we were allowed to witness, and a testament to the peculiarity and complexity of Life.

The First Movie

This is my very first attempt at moviemaking.

Howie and Sebastian were playing with Lil in the front yard. We get to hear Sebastian's big hound voice complaining that Howie got the stick...



Heh.

Really Hurting

At this time last year, Bernie and I were hurtling across the country, ostensibly to my sister's rescue.

She's dead now; the rescue was in vain.

Under the smoky skies, looking at the date, I imagined trying to explain to her why her rescue failed; to tell her how much I loved her, and how powerless I felt.

I tried to tell her tonight, hoping that somehow she would hear me.

The worst hell I can imagine is meeting her again in the next life and having her demand of me, "Why didn't you help me?"

I tried, and I failed, and the loss of my sister's life is still ripping me apart.

But Then Came the Bad News ...

What was for us a charming little thundershower was for many others, a disaster.

Lightning from the storm set off over 700 fires around the state. 700.

And our lovely cooling trend is ruined -- the air is too smoky to be outdoors safely.

And the virus I had got drastically worse. Here comes pneumonia like a freight train! Fortunately I went to the doctor Monday and we were able to head it off before it was fully-fledged.

I hope the fires are under control soon, for everyone's sake.

A Day at the Resort

Since the last entry, I came down with yet another virus, one Lillian brought home from the last week of Kindergarten, when some smarmy stupid cow mama thought that keeping her sick kid home from school for the final party of the year would traumatize her child forever. "He's running a fever, but it would be so unfair for him to miss the Last Day of School ..."

God alone knows how many kids started their summer vacation sick because of that selfish, immature parent.

The virus laid Lil low for about three days. I'm hoping that I'm over the worst of it. Night before last I hardly slept for coughing, and even pulled a muscle in my throat from it. Last night I slept sitting up in the New Comfy Chair, and it wasn't TOO bad. I still awoke groggy and feeling digestively challenged by the cough suppressant/antihistamine, but by 10 am, had stopped coughing enough to rise to the effort of cleaning up the back patio after all those freakin' windy days.

I took my time and methodically swept up the fallen leaves and crud that had been blown onto the patio, and re-arranged the furniture there. I took a break to drink a pint of water, because the temperature at 9am had already been at 92. It was, by then, close to 11am.

I put on my bathing suit and hosed the accumulated dust off the patio. The result? Paradise. The chairs were in the shade, the pool was glistening in the sun, and Bernie was awake. We spent the next six hours outside, dipping in the pool for cool, sipping wine, reading our respective books, and ... getting rained on.

RAIN.

In June.

We'd just leisurely paddled down to the deep end of the pool, when I looked at the sky to the south and said, "Whoa, if we were back east, I'd say it was going to thundershower!"

The unpredicted bank of clouds was gray and nasty looking; I started scanning the edges for funnel clouds. But we're in Central California; it just doesn't do that here.

We sat on the ledge over the 8-ft end, and there was a low rumble. Bernie laughed. "That's thunder."

"It was not," I retorted. "That was some dumbass's car that doesn't have a muffler."

The sky pealed again, unmistakably not like a car. We got out of the pool.

Still not believing the clouds had anything to do with California, we called Alex and Lillian out to listen. And then it began to rain on us, while we sat reading our books. We had to put the books away, and the cloth cushions indoors. It rained harder than it did the last winter rain we had.

No, we did not go indoors with the cushions. We sat outside through it all under the lemon tree, cackling at the amazing turns of fate. Pass up the chance to be rained on in June in California's Central Valley? Not likely.

The rest of the afternoon we spent under the clouds (no more thunder came) until the wave passed and the sun came out again, and we finished reading our books. We played in the pool until we were raisins, and had a wholly wonderful day.

Aside from the occasional paroxysms of coughing that made me feel like I was being shredded.

The cloud cover and storm kept us no hotter than 100 degrees, which isn't too bad. Tomorrow is supposed to be about 10 degrees cooler, and the good news is, the patio is already nice and clean.

Killing Time

So pretty.

Stinkin' blasted plant. It's called "bindweed" because what it does is crawl all over other plants and choke them to death.

I had had it eradicated in my yard the year after we moved here; then we got new neighbors, and the lady of the house thought it was a pretty groundcover and let it run rampant.

Then she got a garden service that comes weekly and sprays weedkiller, so she no longer has a bindweed problem. Once again, I do, and alas, I'm very bad at spraying weedkiller weekly.

Maybe I'll do that today. Wednesday is a good day for killing things, isn't it?

One Pretty Day

Yesterday the winds did not race across the dusty Valley.

When I got up, it was cool and pleasant, and the sunlight reflected off the pool to cast sweet morning shadows on the retaining wall beneath the alstromeria.

Bernie and I had lunch in Modesto, then came home and swam together in the pool with Howie before he had to leave for work. It was a nice day, and we planned to do more swimming today after lunch.

Well, forget that. By 7 am the branches of the neighborhood trees were thrashing so loudly it made my scalp crawl to listen. I checked the weather ... yet ANOTHER wind advisory, to last all day today, and all night, and all day tomorrow.

And then it's supposed to get hotter than hell.

So much for idyllic California weather.

Made Alex Hook It Up

So, so weary!

It wasn't a physical day -- not with the damned latest wind storm in progress. Can't play or work outside, too much dust in the air.

However, mental activities can be tiring, too. I worked on the Press this morning; except for the cover image, which should be done tomorrow, it's ready to go. (No Fever Dreams cartoon this week; there's a limit to how many articles I want carrying my byline. It's the Piker Press, not the Sand Pilarski Dog and Pony Show.)

When I had a few minutes to spare, I had a look at the Belmont Stakes site. The race is tomorrow, and Big Brown is the favorite. I'd looked at the Kentucky Derby on line some weeks ago, and Bernie had told me he'd seen an impressive clip of the Preakness. (Note: The horse races "Kentucky Derby", the "Preakness", and the "Belmont Stakes" comprise a series of grueling races called "The Triple Crown." When I lived on the East Coast, coverage of the races was huge; out here on the Other Coast, it's lucky if I see anything in the newspapers at all.)

So as my morning break, I Googled the Derby again, and then the Preakness, and was truly impressed by the performance of the favorite. He's not Secretariat, who, back in '73, stole my heart in the Derby post parade, before I knew anything about him, but Big Brown is a looker, and he pulled off that Preakness sprint with a lot of class.

The video I saw online showed the horse after the amazing surge of speed in the Preakness, after he'd won, with the jockey trying to slow the horse to a jog. Big Brown was fighting like a son of a bitch -- he wanted to keep on running. It was at that point that I suddenly had hairs turning gray remembering that our television was DEAD.

Bernie had just crawled out of bed and was feebly drinking coffee when I hit him with, "Dammit, the Belmont's tomorrow and we don't have a TV!!! And Baffert says he thinks Big Brown is a freak of nature and can pull off a Triple Crown!!! @!##!#!"

"You have got to watch your mouth when Lillian is home from school," he suggested groggily. But after I provided him with a sumptuous lunch of pork steak, parsley potatoes and butter, and white and yellow corn (mmm, sweet) he fired up the erstwhile "good" laptop (I still haven't forgiven it for eating 1100 words I wrote) and did the final research on TV's. "If you want a TV, you can go get it. Otherwise, you can wait until tomorrow and we'll see if we can get it before the race."

I was dressed and out the door before he was even ready to take his shower in preparation for work, stash dollars in pocket.

Never in my entire life have I bought a TV by myself.

Keep in mind that over the years, I've not gone anywhere by myself if I could help it, and since last summer's traumas, I couldn't go many places by myself, let alone spend multiple hundreds of dollars.

But I did. The new TV is in the living room now, functional, beautiful, bigger than I ever imagined a TV to be. Bernie said to me on the phone after I checked out and was on my way home, "Now I know how much you love the Belmont."

Yes.

And then I came home and made my first foray into experimenting with PHP! While cooking party chicken wings for snacking on during the Belmont! I was successful in my attempt at PHP, and the chicken wings are great! I am a GENIUS!!

Fine, not a genius, but wow, I stretched myself today.

Nice TV.

A Climate Change

"Euonymus" is a cool name for a plant, and I like this one. It's a nice shrub: no thorns, no rancid-smelling blooms, no leaf drop to speak of. Even in winter it's a pretty burst of color.

I snapped a picture of the euonymus because it was bright and happy-looking, and I've included the picture here because for the past few days, I've felt brightened, and happy.

Last summer, I remember sitting in a hotel room alone (after sitting with my sister in her hospital room all afternoon), chatting with my good friend Lydia, and confessing to her that I was so damaged by events that I said "my hands shake all the time now." Fact is, they only shake most of the time now, and not everything makes me break down in tears. It's an improvement!

This week I had a strange burst of Action and cleaned the house indoors, washed down the front of the house outside, cleared my desk of paperwork, cooked, shopped, rearranged furniture, wrote about 6000 words, organized my closet, wrote letters ...

Bernie asked me what was up. I said, tentatively, "... I felt ... normal?"

Well, maybe "normal" wasn't the word that was the most descriptive. But it was easier to say than "For the first time in well over a year, I'm not so covered in anxiety that I can't think what to do next, I'm not so soul-sucked by depression and what-could-I-have-done-betters that all I want to do is huddle in a chair in a corner and hide, and my body doesn't feel like any moment could be the Big One, in which I just stop in my tracks and die like two of my uncles did."

Yeah, all of that. So ... "normal" will do.

I like the feeling. I hope it continues.

Come August, There Will Be Grapes

This then, is The Grapevine.

Stretching for about 30 feet along my northside fence, on my side AND my neighbor's, this son of a gun produces so many grapes we can't eat them all.

When I bought a little bare-root pack of grapes ... maybe five or six years ago, it was nothing more than a stick with a bud or two. I asked the nursery expert if it would grow in a pot, and she told me it could, but not to expect a lot from it. She went on to tell me I'd have to spray it with several different chemicals every year, blah, blah, blah. I didn't buy $50 worth of chemicals -- the grape starts were marked down to End-of-the-Season worthless. I took it home and plunked it in a pot, [see red arrow] watered it, and wondered if it would last the summer.

The following spring, to my surprise, it began to sprout again. I moved the pot to a spot by the fence where I had a trellis, stuck a paving block underneath it so it couldn't put down roots in the soil, gave it its own emitter on the irrigation line, and forgot about it. I hoped it would vine up on the fence for greenery, but I never expected grapes.

By the following spring, the pot had become a wintering spot for ants, and a clump of grass three feet tall had started in the pot. I yanked out the grass, threw in a handful of Osmocort slow-release fertilizer pellets, and evicted the ants by turning on the irrigation system. The plant went nuts shooting out tendrils in every direction. We had a few bunches of grapes, yay! They were small, but tasty.

The following spring I noticed two things: The pot was actually lifted on one side by the vine's grip on the fence; and ... water wasn't draining from the pot.

Okay, three things, the third being that the pot was only about half full of soil, thanks to successive wintering damned ants. Well, I thought, that lack of drainage and soil will do Mr. Grape in for sure. Wrong yet again. We gave away grapes to everyone we knew, until people were avoiding us; we were sick of grapes and left them for the birds. Last year Bernie found a fellow at work who liked the grapes, so I kept packing him down with shopping bags of grapes to take in to work.

This year, I vowed to hack away the vine and allow only a few clusters to ripen. Over the weekend, however, Bernie informed me he had a co-worker ask if the grapes were ripe yet, and could he have some.

Fine, we'll do our part for world hunger; I will only trim up the grapes that the dogs might reach. Sebastian has no sense at all when it comes to eating fruit, and grapes are not good for dogs. (I hope that damned parrot enjoys them.)

The Year of Destructo Machines

First it was the dishwasher, and I guess I'll just blame the rest of it on the dishwasher's incendiary speeches that inspired the continuing uprisings.

The dishwasher, a glitzy quiet and efficient machine bought in 1997, began to hoick up water into its own electronic innards. Water + Wiring = Not Good. Then the CD changer began to malfunction. Then the refrigerator in the kitchen, a monolith also bought in 1997. (The squat little creature in the garage bought by Bernie's parents in 1941 still trundles on, never ever having needed a freon recharge or service.)

The air conditioner kacked on us, during the last heat wave. Then the dryer died. Then the washer. (The stove I had replaced about five years ago because the one that was in here was shitty, but that's not about this year.)

Before the weather got too cold, we had to replace the water heater.

Whoops, forgot about the pool's circulation pump that had to be replaced last summer.

Both Alex and John's computers bit the dust last fall.

Mere days ago, my laptop betrayed me and disappeared an entire day's worth of writing. Hours. HOURS and HOURS of writing. Product failure!

In the last couple days, Bernie's laptop (only a few months younger than mine) began to act very, very screwy, so he did a complete system wipe and restore. It's acting screwier than ever, and running really, really insanely hot.

This weekend, the television died. The End, Finis. For a while, it acted wonky but we could get it to work by rapping it smartly on the top. Nevermore, said the Raven, flying in the window to perch upon our chamber door. This is an ex-TV.

While working on the Piker Press cover and updating my blog this weekend, I was less than pleased to observe that my beloved Sony monitor was rendering some blurry shit in regular lines down the screen.

Oh, and of course, let us not forget my digital camera that went toes up this past winter. When I grumped about it to the salesman at the electronics store, he said, "Wow, it was four years old? That's a long time for a camera."

Planned obsolescence and crappy manufacturing are a bite.

In the mean time, the 67-year-old refrigerator in the garage cackles to itself and says, "Pussies."

Still Baby-Sitting the Process

It seems like hours since I last posted, but obviously that isn't the case.

I blame it on the new laptop, as I have only installed AVG Free Virus Protection on it until I decide what all I want to spend, and I refuse to surf or mess around on the internet with the New and Glitzy until it is adequately protected.

And of course, I'm continuing to write my someday-to-be-serialized-in-the-Piker Press novel, "Transitions" on it. Not going to risk an infection; not going to stop writing. The new laptop is in quarantine, except from me.

It seems like days since I sat down at the computer this morning. In reality, it's only been 14 hours. My ass is mighty tired.

I've had breaks: I get up when my buns are aching so bad I can't think anymore; I did get off the exam stool I use as seating to make lunch for me and Bernie; I hobbled up to the mailbox, and did other quick tasks before perching before the screen again. I proof-read, formatted, and loaded in excess of 20 articles to the Press.

What could possibly make me so assiduous? Why, only this: I subscribed to "Geek Squad" and their online auto-backup service. They'll back up my shit automatically for $50/year. Daily. DAILY. No more freak outs at losing stuff.

However, the first dump of files to their secure retrieval site is taking forever. And since this ass-hat computer feels compelled to hibernate every ten minutes if there's no activity, I've been here holding its ass-hat hand all day ... and because playing Spider Solitaire for 14 hours isn't all that appealing, I've been working on the Press.

I don't know why it's taking so long to transfer the files. I have observed that .psd's take forever to transfer. And with all the cover art and practice pieces, I have a lot of .psd's. Damn.

Currently the thing says that 75% of my files are saved. I think I have to just let this machine hibernate and pick up where it left off in the morning.

Oh, and it's about 10 - 15 degrees colder than it should be at this time of year, here. That doesn't help.

No Open House

What, three posts in one day?

Call it a whim. Call it guilt at having not posted for a while. Call it can't go outside the damn house or have the damn windows open because of the damn wind.

This has been an unseasonably windy spring. An unreasonably windy spring. When the winds let up last week, we rejoiced, only to have the temperatures leap up to 110 degrees, which is the shits, although it did take the swimming pool from "cryogenic" to blissful.

Then someone turned on the "wind" switch again, and there are trees down all over the place. Fortunately, not in our yard -- so far.

Plowed fields are now being deposited 60 miles up into the mountains and up everyone's nose with the gusts in excess of 40 mph.

My Japanese maple's leaves have all curled, crisped at the edges, battered and dehydrated by the wind.

Forget swimming -- it's now too cold again for dips in the pool, and even if one did, one would have to take a bath afterwards because of the amount of mud in the air.

And monumentally irritating is the fact that although the house is only at about 70 degrees, when the wind kicked into high gear this afternoon, we had to close up the windows and turn on the AC -- to clean up the air in the house so that we could stop coughing and sneezing. We won't be able to open up to catch cool air tonight -- there's too much dirt carried on it.

Places along the highways where farmers have plowed fields are almost obscured by the crap in the air. I went to the store this morning and was assailed not only by the wind but by the scent of freshly-spread chicken manure. This is May, for heaven's sake, not March!

In this last picture, Howie's expression says it all. His tail, usually held high in exuberance, is down. He's squinting. His ears are in an annoyed position. As I type this, he's not even in this room. He's gone back to the bedroom, having given up on the day.

He should have been swimming with me. Instead, we're hiding from the wind.

Yes, Every Day

A couple of people know that my New Year's Resolution for the past two years has been to create something every day.

Last year fell short of the goal as my life plummeted into abject misery with my mother's illness, my sister's death, and my own winter of Endlessly Being Sick, but this year, I'm pleased to be able to say that midway through May, I've succeeded in my goal.

Most of what I've done has been to write; along with a couple short stories, I finished an untitled sequel to my 2007 NaNoWriMo novel, "Truck Stops", and am 50k+ into a novel called "Transitions."

I've done some cover art for the Piker Press, and even a Fever Dreams cartoon a couple weeks ago.

For a while I maintained a blog about the creative effort, but after I kept writing, "Well, I wrote another 400 words last night," over and over, I abandoned and deleted the blog, and promised to update the project here instead.

I was very pleased with the result when I did this graphic for Mel Trent's story, "Angel Hunter" from her book The Immortal Guns of Talon Constantine. Mel, Lydia Manx and I brainstormed some images, which was most helpful, and then, when I started to work on it, a weird thing happened -- the art began to flow in the same way my writing does ... it just began to happen.

This is unusual for me. Ever since I was little, I hid while I was drawing or sketching, and if I couldn't hide, I kept to conventional subjects and ways of drawing them. Someone was always looking over my shoulder, saying, "What are you doing?" or far worse, "Oh, that's going to be soooo good!" As a result, art work is stressful for me. Writing isn't, usually, because I'm downright shitty about it and if anyone pesters me while I'm writing, God help them, because I will roar at them to take off.

The above graphic -- well, I got into it so deeply that I didn't care if anyone saw me, and if they had said something, I'd have roared at them to leave me alone. Sounds rather rude, but for me, it's a big, big step forward.

Also, I give credit to the ghosts in the machine; Photoshop glitched in one layer and did the gradient of color a twist I didn't ask for ... and it made all the difference in the result.

The Importance of Being Comfy

Once upon a time, there was a chair that had been in a hotel room for years.

Its fabric dulled over the years, and its matching ottoman began to look a bit ratty. The hotel dumped it, and all its brothers and sisters; a furniture dealer carried them all away and stacked them in a dusty warehouse that sold, on the cheap, used furniture.

One day a couple came in looking for cheap chairs to put in their TV room, and took home the dull chair and its twin, with their matching ratty ottomans. It was a good thing, and for the next nine years, the couple reveled in the comfiness of the old chair, guests got so comfy they fell asleep in the arms of the old chair, and the dog of the house loved the chair so much that he stopped sleeping beside his muvver and slept in the chair instead. Three novels, a bushel basket of short stories, and more than a few movie reviews were written from that chair. The chair was pleased that not only the dog loved to sleep in it, but the mistress also slept in its arms when she was sick, or needed to be near the fireplace to keep it going in the cold winter nights.

Alas! The upholstery could not last forever, and began to disintegrate. Time had its way with the chair and its twin; they were tired and worn out and ready to return to the earth.

When they were gone, the mistress of the house was inconsolable, because all that was left to sit in and write was a bony piece of lawn furniture brought in from the porch. (There was a set of living room furniture, but they were neither particularly comfortable nor well-situated for writing. Thus they were invisible to the mistress of the house.)

The woman knew that she had to find the proper successor to the position of Comfy Chair. She went into furniture stores and sat in every chair there was to offer. Some were too deep, so that she had no back support at all; some were so squooshy she gagged; others were just too high for her stubby legs and her feet dangled, a situation sure to cut off circulation to her legs. Some had backs too low to allow one to fall asleep in; some were just so butt-ugly that the woman knew that she would pour gasoline on them and burn them down within a fortnight.

Then, just the other day, weary with watching the rather lousy movie "Prince Caspian", the mistress of the house skidded to a stop in front of Pier 1 Imports, a store fabled for chairs designed for short people.

She went in and once again, sat in every chair in the store. And then it happened: her husband, knowing how short his wife was, and how comfort-oriented her rear end was, directed her to sit in a chair. The mistress of the house sat, and she and the chair fell immediately in love.

This is that chair, and its friend, the matching ottoman.

Difficult to tell in this humble photograph, the chair is smiling smugly that the woman has already fallen asleep in it several times while writing, and the dog cannot wait for the woman to go to bed so that he can climb up and snug in.

And amazingly, it's not only The Comfy Chair, it's beautiful, too.

No Pictures Yet

Last night, an amazing thing happened.

The novel, "Transitions", that I have been working on swelled to 42,250 words. And I was pleased with it. It was the last chapter before I would take the characters and dump their poor little lives into a blender.

Then the amazing thing happened. The mouse on my laptop started jumping all over the place; I couldn't 'select' ANYthing, couldn't 'refresh' anything, and when I went to my document, I had 41,390 words ... ending right where I'd started writing five hours before. 900 words ... GONE.

GONE.

I was so numbed by shock and disgust that I drank my glass of wine and went to bed. Even forgot to feed Howie, that's how upset I was.

Around 1 am I woke, sat straight upright, and fired up the laptop to see if I was lucky, and that I had only dreamed losing all those words. Nope, not a dream. And the thought of sleep was far from me. I fed the poor hungry How, and gritted my teeth, and began to hammer.

By 4:15 am, the word count was back up to 42,130 or so, and some of the sentences I remembered well enough to use, and I was compulsively hitting 'Save' after every paragraph, even though I had 'saved' the stuff that was lost, too.

By this evening I realized that I just couldn't risk having that happen again, so I spent my stash and bought a new laptop.

It's a pretty thing, but it sure is a pain in the ass getting to know a new machine.