More Dumb Things To Do

Last night I dreamed again that I owned that white horse that was for sale last month.

In the dream, I had to get somewhere fast, and I put a bridle on him and rode off, bareback.

Today I suggested to a friend of hers that I would buy him for $400. That's stupid, because I don't have the cash influx to pay for his board. All I've got is that asking price.

I'm sure when she hears my offer, she'll call me a f---ing b--ch. That's okay. I'd rather she despise me for a valid offer than have her think me a fool to buy a 20-year-old horse for $3000.

I shouldn't even have made the offer, but I couldn't resist.

In the meantime, Advent continues. Day One, Cartoon. Day Two, I helped Alex put up a counter-cultural lighting display. Day Three, I made a new pork dish at lunchtime and a pumpkin pie tonight. I'm good to go.

The Season of Reflection

Yesterday was the first Sunday of Advent.

The four weeks of Advent are set aside to prepare oneself for the future, for the celebration of the birth of the Christ, for the end of one's own life, and for the end of the world.

The first Sunday of Advent marks the beginning of the liturgical year (the religious year for Catholic Christians) and so Advent is a time to start over again, trying to find some progress in one's spiritual life.

I'm trying to complete one creative task a day before I plow into bed to sleep. Tonight I actually finished a cartoon. (Ahead of the Press deadline???)It's a small start. But it's a beginning, nevertheless.

Horses and Manners Revisited

Remember Rusty, my friend's horse who needed to learn some manners? (See "Learning Manners with Mr. Stud Chain" and "Shoving Horses")

Yesterday evening my friend and I set off for a two-hour ride through orchard roads. It didn't start out as a two hour ride, but we were curious as to why one block of orchard was being taken out, so we rode off down that stretch of road, and then we realized that we hadn't been in that neighborhood for almost a year and so decided to check it out, but after traveling down that road a ways, spotted some heavy machinery spraying fungicide/insecticide/fertilizer (stuff I didn't care to breathe) and had to take a detour ... we were wandering, mostly.

And we could, because Rusty was The Perfect Gentleman. The gentle bit, the tie-down to keep him from throwing his head in the air, the ground work -- all those things convinced him that he didn't have to make the decisions for him and his rider. Relieved of the burden of decision-making, he relaxed, and became once again the fantastic trail horse he used to be.

The ride was wonderful. We were out a bit later than I cared to be, but it wasn't quite dark when we got back to the ranch. We saw big hawks and little hawks, big dogs and little dogs, and talked about Life, the Universe, and Horses. We felt the sun's heat as we started and the chill at dusk when the fog began to rise.

Well mannered horses, and a big open sky.

Reflections on Dreams

If there was anything that convinced me that yesterday's decision to bail out of NaNoWriMo was a good one, it was my dreams last night.

I dreamt that Bernie and I went to visit a (faceless) fellow NaNo-er, but during the visit, the spouse of the NaNo-er made unwelcome advances to me. Disgusted, I grabbed my purse and we left the household. Upon return home, I was greeted by a neighbor, who invited me to enter his house and meet his new lover. I did so, and was amazed to see that the house had been transformed into a studio, with hundreds of wonderful art projects. "Now, that's what being an artist is about," I thought as I passed the work tables where the art-in-progress was set out. I met the lover, who was timid about touching my hand. But the greeting was friendly, and I asked permission to wander around the room looking at the beautiful creations.

All symbols in a dream are the dreamer.

Something about NaNo this year was unwelcome. Was it the hurry? The deadline? The repeated boasts and vows and aspirations by fellow NaNovelists to publish a NaNovel conventionally? I don't know. I just know that I was uncomfortable in their forums, and didn't really want to tell more about myself than absolutely necessary. And so I went back to my own routine. And met once again my timid creative self, and felt a renewed desire to make some art come into existence.

Yeah, this year is for that.

And loser though I may be at NaNoWriMo, all five of the cartoons I submitted to the paper were bought. The editor of the newspaper likes my stuff.

Cool.

NaNoWriMo Blues

I bailed from National Novel Writing Month today.

When today dawned, I was about 15,000 words behind where I ought to be in order to make the 50k word count by the end of the month. My dog needed a run. My horse needed exercising. Lunch had to be made. I had to go to the store or else we wouldn't have lunch. I needed to write a letter to my mother. I looked at what I had written the night before and was ashamed of how downright shitty the writing was.

I know that NaNoWriMo's motto is "No Plot? No Problem!" and back in 2001, writing my first novel was a joy, even though about 40% of it had to be scrapped later. It was my first effort at writing a story, and I loved my pieced-together heap of words like it was a cuddly rag doll. However, over the next year of trying to edit the heap (and leaving editing by the wayside because it was so depressing) and then being invited to write a weekly piece for the Piker Press, I learned so much about writing that when NaNo rolled around the next year, I finished my project in 21 days. The next two years' NaNovels took 25 - 27 days.

This year, I was reluctant to start. I had three ideas for a book, and just before it was time to start, found a fourth. I started one, paused for a short story, fretted that I wasn't doing justice to the book I wanted to write, switched to another idea. That idea quickly turned into a quagmire of stupid, repetitive paragraphs and pointless digressions. I spent more than 2000 words describing stairwells.

Now that could be a great word-count-padding exercise. But is padding word count how I really want to be spending my evening writing time?

So I bagged on NaNoWriMo, and instead wrote the letter I owed my mother. If I wanted to cheat, I could have added it to the novel and made the day's word count. I could have added this entry to the word count, and the posts I made on various forums, too. But that's not writing a novel, that's just word count. The scenario I had ended up writing for NaNo was word count, nothing more. Not. Acceptable.

Maybe next year I'll have a story to tell.

Or not.

Suddenly Cartoonist

Something has changed.

By my own standards for NaNoWriMo, I should have 18,000 words written by the end of today. Folks, it ain't gonna happen. I'll continue to write throughout the month, and work on that "writing habit" kind of thing, but 50k? I think that's a pipe dream at this point.

Part of it is still the back injury thing from this past spring. I am getting better; I can ride my horse again. However, a twenty-minute workout in the arena or a two-hour trail ride out just wrecks me for about three days. Three days = 6000 words. For the horse's health, and my sanity, I can't stop riding. But there's also laundry to be done, and garden maintenance, and exercising the dog. That leaves a golden couple hours in the evening, as long as I don't have to cook, or prepare for the next day. Or draw a cartoon.

$$$$$

Yesterday, the editor of the Piker Press was talking to the editor of the local newspaper and showed him her Fever Dreams Weekly Planner. My dear editor promptly sold me down the river and thus I shall be print-published in a matter of days. For cash.

Conventionally published.

For money.

I have no interest in syndication; Watterson's struggle with commercial publication was instructional in how to resist becoming a whore artist. I miss Calvin and Hobbes very much, but I adamantly agree that just because one is published and popular is no reason to cheapen one's art.

The other instructional artist I refer to is Jim Davis. I'm old enough to remember the early days of Garfield -- it was a great comic for people with cats. What his cartoon has become is embarrassing to look at, and I don't, won't look at it, like I won't look at mutilated bodies as I pass a traffic accident. Maybe he makes a lot of money with it, but the original idea has been lost, the unique artwork has been lost. If he's not embarrassed with his current work, I'd be surprised.

Anyway, art. Apparently some of my cartoons are going to be sold. It will be interesting to see them in paper print.

Time to adopt a new pseudonym so that no one eggs my house?

I can't believe so much time has passed since my last entry.

Blame NaNoWriMo. I had gotten out of the habit of writing "stuff" every day. I wrote to match the wind in the hideously stinksome "Angel Trumpet Vine" my neighbor planted: in other words, if that damned vine was pouring out its noxious fat lady's perfume, I couldn't write a word other than repeated, "Peeeeooooouuuu!"

In attempting to NaNo, I am forced to attempt a minimum word count per day. Gahhhhh. Re-forging a 2k a day habit is mental cruelty.

But even a few days of NaNo got me straightened around so that I could sit down and write "Out in the Cold" for the Press in one sitting. Yeah. That's the way it's supposed to work.

All Hallows Eve

No horsey lessons for Rusty for a couple days. The last batch wore me out.

I can't remember where I learned it, but there is a rule that if you're not up to an all-out fight with a 1200 pound animal, don't try to train a horse when you're tired. The last session was more than my recovering old body could handle. Well, maybe it was the shoveling of dung that pushed me past my limit. In any event, Rusty is on hold, and maybe that's a good thing.

Dink needed exercised, and so I went out to the ranch. Rusty was extremely jealous that Dink got to "do something" and he didn't. Perhaps he'll be more cooperative the next time. Dink, A.K.A. Duquesne, hasn't been actively "worked" for a long time, so we spent 30 minutes doing just that. Walk walk walk walk. Trot trot trot trot. Walk sideways to the right, walk sideways to the left. Argue over what position the horse's head should be in. Both of us were filthy with dust and disgustingly sweaty when we were done.

Thank goodness we had decided as a household not to mess with the Halloween thing tonight. I used to love decorating the front of the house with candles and pumpkins and fake spider webs, and dressing up to scare the tar out of little kids who came seeking candy gifts. Last year, the night was dominated by roaming gangs of high school kids who carried pillowcases to gather as much loot as possible. But they didn't even bother with costumes.

You know what? If an old woman can bother with costuming for an evening, so can a teenager. Of course, I tend to think that if I can speak clearly and politely and not breathe through my mouth constantly, then a teenager can also not show me his tonsils while he garbles, "Trick or treat." And he could pull his damn pants up, the freakin' moron. Which one was the freakin' moron? Pick one.

Of course, when they came to the porch, I could have asked them, "What are you dressed up as, tasteless slack-jawed shitheads?" But then I would have been asking for some kind of destructive retaliation on my car or my house.

The point of dressing up as witches or spirits for Halloween was to mock the spectre of Death, to laugh in the face of Evil. Looking into the soulless eyes of those older children of Excess Wealth and Utter Lack of Morality, unfortunately, I see the face of Evil laughing the last laugh.

Bah. Humbug.

Shoving Horses

Today Rusty demonstrated that he remembered yesterday's lessons, and then was humbled some more.

We put a full-cheek snaffle bit in his mouth. It's a very gentle bit, which Rusty needs because as big as he is, he has very sensitive skin on his muzzle. The advantage of the full-cheek bit is that as you pull on a rein to turn a horse, not only does it pull, but it pushes the horse's mouth along from the other side, as both sides, where the bit emerges from between the horse's lips, have a four-inch vertical bar that keeps the bit from slipping from side to side. (God, that sounds confusing. Maybe I'll add an illustration tomorrow.)

Anyway, we put the bit in his mouth and then let him stand around (no reins, no saddle) for about 20 minutes, so that he could see for himself that having a bit in his mouth would not kill him on the spot.

Then my friend exercised him in the round corral, making him think a little while still carrying the bit and the jingling stud chain hanging from his halter. This helped him understand he could still move forward and obey while having the bit in his mouth and things jingling around his head. No need to buck, no need to stubbornly stand still.

After exercise came Shoving. I can place both my hands on my horse's shoulder, neck, head, sides, rump, whatever, and gently push, and he will get out of my way. For that moment, I am bigger than he is, and that is a good thing. The time had come for Rusty to learn that he could be shoved around. Indeed, that he would be shoved around, and that being shoved around is a good thing for a horse. After a few minutes, my friend learned how to brace herself and make Rusty let himself be shoved around the corral.

We saddled our horses and moved to the arena, where Rusty did a very nice job of walking and turning. (My dear Duquesne was, of course, impeccable. Sometimes I think he behaves better when other horses act up, just to make them look really, really bad.) We began work with Rusty to get him to lower that great white head and let himself be turned in a tight circle. It was very hard work for my friend, because when Rusty throws his head in the air, he nearly yanks her out of the saddle. I don't know that she weighs as much as his head.

But we ended after 40 minutes on an up-note again, and then mucked out Dink's paddock. I'm exhausted, but tomorrow we'll be back at it. They only new thing will be a tie-down for Rusty's bridle so that he can't throw his head so far in the air. I don't like tie-downs, but Rusty has learned long ago that throwing his head around works to scare the shit out of the little monkeys who climb on his back.

Learning Manners with Mr. Stud Chain

My friend's horse behaved badly today.

He decided he didn't want to leave the ranch, and took her back to the arena twice. The third time we tried to go out, she dragged him along by the reins. His response was to rip the reins out of her hand and gallop off, leaving her to walk back.

Rusty was angry for two reasons. One, he'd been taken off his lush pasture and put in a new place. (Horses hate that.) Two, his owner had been told by a reputable trainer that he needed to have a bit in his mouth -- the semi-halter she used was not giving her any control over him. Today Rusty decided that he was not going to cooperate with anything. He braced his feet and refused to move.

I don't like to tell people what to do with their horses, because every horse is different, and what works with one may not work with another. However, watching Rusty winning every step of the way irked me enough to say that if he was my horse, I would make use of a stud chain to help him learn who was in charge.

A stud chain is a stout chain about a foot and a half long. You can see them used to keep horses under control when they're being led just before a race. For a really fractious horse, you can put the chain over the horse's nose (in worst cases they put it over the horse's upper gum) and the unpleasant pressure usually keeps the horse paying attention. Rusty had never had a stud chain on him, so we just looped it through the halter he was wearing, under his chin.

I took his lead rope, attached to the stud chain, pulled gently, and told him to come. He braced his feet and refused. I tugged again, told him to come, and again he refused. The third time, when he set his ears back and refused, I flipped the lead rope just enough to give him a little boink! of pressure from the stud chain. He threw his head up in great surprise!

We went through that sequence three times. After his third encounter with the stud chain, he came forward to me willingly, and got much petting for his troubles. Now he understood what the stud chain could do to him. It could jump up and bite him if he didn't do what he was told!

The only other thing we wanted to establish with that first encounter was that Mr. Stud Chain would assist a person leading him if he didn't follow willingly when led, or get out of the person's way if they asked him to move. "Move" means MOVE, every time, not just when Rusty is in a good mood. It's an easy exercise to do, by and large. The person leads the horse by stepping towards his hindquarters while holding the lead rope. The horse must turn his head, and move his big arse away from the person. Manners. "Get out of my way" is one of the most valuable lessons a horse has to learn.

When Rusty was reliably moving out of my friend's way, we ended the session on that upbeat note. Tomorrow morning we'll work with him some more. He's a good horse, and I've seen him do some fantastic work. When he gets over his snit and learns some better manners, he'll be excellent again.

I was a bit reluctant to step in and pick up that lead rope; I had just ridden the smooth and perfectly-behaved Duquesne for 40 minutes, and sure as hell didn't want to end up aggravating my left shoulder, which has finally started to heal. Fortunately Rusty was surprised enough that he wasn't interested in fighting, and then my friend took over. I'm dirty and a little tired, but I feel good. Finally.

A century of comfort

The rocking chair, in its earliest-known place, belonged to my father's best friend's mother.

My father was born in 1923. He remembered the rocker in his friend Layton Jury's house, where Dad spent a lot of his time, his mother being too young and busy to keep up with him. Dad rocked on Mrs. Jury's rocker until he fell over backwards on it.

Dad never said what color the rocker originally was. When Layton's mother died, my father went to the estate auction and bought the chair. He repainted and upholstered it, black with a green, gold, black, and white plaid, and presented it to me as a gift a few months before my daughter was born. He wanted me to have a comfortable chair in which to rock my baby.

Somewhere around 1997, I wirebrushed the whole chair, repainted it a dark blue, and reupholstered it in a floral fabric, and made a matching footstool for it.

A couple weeks ago, I was thinking that I needed to wirebrush, prime, and repaint the woven body of the rocker -- this dry air here makes things look shabby quickly. I hadn't decided on a color for it, though. Maybe a deep green, or a lighter blue?

The question was answered this morning ... I heard Alex cry out in horror, went running out to the kitchen to see Alex staring at the broken runner of the rocker. It just gave way, probably a crack that was there when Dad bought the thing.

Can it be fixed? I don't know. The other runner could be removed, and it could still be a chair. So many memories, so many years. If the chair can't be fixed, it will nevertheless, not be forgotten.

Howie, Before Dawn

As soon as the smoke alarm bleated, Howie leaped off my bed and went to find the source of the annoying sound.

He'd have made a great companion dog for someone with impaired hearing. He sounds an alert for people at the door, for cats fighting in our yard, for our housecat's indiscretions of climbing on tables or trying to go into my studio or bedroom. Howie lets me know if the phone is ringing, or if the washing machine load is unbalanced, or the stove timer goes off.

The smoke alarm had him stumped, though. Maybe a spider crawled through the sensor, or some dust triggered the sound, we don't know. It stopped after a couple seconds, and we knew there was no fire in the house. After racing through the house and not finding the source of the noise, Howie came barreling back to the bedroom, jumped up on the bed, and threw himself into my lap for a cuddling and reassurance. Well, if I had been sitting up, it would have been my lap. Instead it was my chest and belly that 65 pounds (30 kg) of insecure dog landed on. I was flattered (and dang near flattened) by his confidence in me. In his fearfulness, he could have just slunk off and hid under a table. To him, that loud and mysterious sound was like hearing a ghost in the house.

BTW, I like the idea of smoke detectors -- but I would strongly advise getting the ones that are just battery operated than the ones that are wired into the house. Ours are wired in, and half of them we had to unplug because they go off erratically, always in the middle of the night. Damn, maybe it is ghosts, after all.

Fevered Dreams of a Creation

Well, the calendar arrived, but didn't make it to my desk.

I opened that package from Lulu and had to grin. The covers looked great. Then, the moment of truth: wasted effort or glorious success? I opened the book at random, and "Stupid Squid" leaped from the pages, image perfect, accompanying graphics perfect. As soon as I showed it to Bernie, he lustfully took it to the patio and looked through it, page by page, chuckling.

His favorite page is the one with Jeb and Marv Buzzards with the dead (or is it?) possum. Mine is the one with the elephant toting a baseball bat.

I showed it to Alex, who giggled when she opened it, and then promptly tore her current planner from its leather case and fitted the Fever Dreams calendar in the pockets.
"Perfect!" she said. "How much do they cost?"

"Ten dollars."

"That's all??" she shouted. "This one's mine! Pay you next week!"

Well, it made it to someone's desk, anyway. I don't mind ordering mine along with the ones we'll be giving to relatives as gifts this year. Seeing how wonderfully this plan came together was worth all the sweat and swearing, the hair-pulling and acid indigestion, the worry and waiting.

And as I said in my last post, seeing a collection of my cartoons in print is one fine feeling.

Fever Dreams 2006 Weekly Planner has 115 pages with over 54 cartoons, space for taking notes, making priority lists, listing addresses and special dates.

Trust me. This one's a gooder.

Anticipation

Tomorrow, my copy of my calendar should arrive.

I've grown accustomed to seeing my books in print, though the feeling of accomplishment when I see them doesn't go away. Ah, but to see my cartoons in print -- that's a different story. I'm on edge about the calendar. I've been frothing at the mouth to see the "Order Shipped" notice in my email; I had hoped that they made the shipment before the cutoff hour on Wednesday, which would have had the package on my doorstep today. Tomorrow. Tomorrow should be that golden day of triumph -- or the thing will look like shit and I'll delete the project until I learn enough to do it right.

But shit or shining achievement, I'll have my weekly planner for 2006 on my desk. With my cartoons in it. That's one cool feeling.

On Again, Off Again

Tonight I'm just Off.

There's nearly two weeks to go before National Novel Writing Month. I've signed up, chosen a title, taken a few notes. Visiting their forums, I see names I recognize from other years; hundreds and hundreds of people getting excited about writing a novel in a month.

I'm about as excited as three-day-old road kill.

Other years, I've had a story to tell. An ending. A point. This year, there's nothing there. Especially there's no joy in the prospect.

I thought about writing a loosely interlinked series of essays, and assembling it into some kind of coherent novel at a later date. I thought of writing a fake memoir of a crazy man. This evening I toyed with the idea of writing fanfic. Any of those would be useful, eventually becoming stories for the Piker Press to publish. Then it occurred to me that I've been writing and sketching under a deadline since April of 2002. That won't stop in November. Why the hell do I want to be adding another deadline to my life when I can't even keep up with the dishes in the sink?

Do I do it to prove that I can? Out of some sense of "loyalty" to Chris Baty, the founder of NaNo? Sure, Chris knows I exist, and hopes I'll participate, but only in the way he knows and hopes for lots and lots of other people. If I just slither off, he's not going to lose any sleep over it, even if he notices, which he won't. Do I do it to "keep company" people with whom I've been acquainted through NaNo over the years? People with whom I keep company outside of NaNo anyway?

Or here's a thought: I'm not excited about NaNoWriMo 2005 because there's a very good chance that I'll not be able to come up with 50k words of a story. The prospect of not excelling is repugnant to me. At the end of November, I might have to say, "No, this one is not for anyone else to read." Select All, Delete.

The latest thought is to write what I think ought to be written down somewhere, no matter how offensive it is to the general populace. I was talking to Josh Brown about it one night, about a story I'd like to write. It would not be "Press-able" and it would not be politically correct. But then Dreamer wasn't, either, now was it?

Most likely I'll make up my mind on November 1st, when I wake up.

Horse-dealing

The horse I wished I could buy is gone.

Allegedly he has been sold, although the rumor is that the woman who "bought" him doesn't want him after all, and is just paying for his board at another facility until she can find an actual buyer. In the mean time, I heard an interesting comment about the horse: the young woman who was selling him was telling prospective buyers that the horse was 15 years old. That's not too old for a horse; horses get sensible between about 10 and 17. But someone heard his previous owner say that the horse was 19. That would have been last year. Now this lovely horse is 20, and that's getting to the end of a useful career for a horse. Granted, a horse can be sweet and functional to 30, but that's kind of unusual.

So now I understand why this young woman was so hot to get rid of him. He's an old horse, and she wants to do team cow penning, like in a rodeo, like you can't do on an old horse.

But she lied about his age, and may have gotten $3000 for him. That's ridiculous. A 20-year-old horse shouldn't sell for more than $1000, and you'd have a hard time finding a taker for that.

Horse trading is unbelievably shady. I bought my first horse for $400. He was 11 years old, and I was assured that he was just a big, fat, lazy, stupid horse. All I wanted was a plug to jog around the pasture on. But Crow was just big and fat, he wasn't lazy, and he wasn't stupid. He also wasn't quite sane, or quite broken to the saddle.

When I found a horse to replace him, I made an appointment to ride the horse. I showed up, and the new horse was lovely. The man who was selling him told me someone else had showed up but were unsure. So I jumped up on the horse, and was very pleased. Only one thing more: I needed to see how he felt under my own saddle. The owner was agreeable. The minute I rounded the corner of the building, the other people whipped out a check -- and bought him, having seen with their own eyes that he was a quality mount. Sold right out from under me.

The next horse was a genius on the trail, a big red quarterhorse with a pedigree a lot longer than mine. I bought him, and had several good rides on him. What the seller didn't say was that one ride in any location would be great; however, the second one would be a nightmare, as once Chet knew the way home, he was going to take you there in a split second. After a 40-minute battle along a busy road, I knew I hated him. I missed work that day because I was exhausted to the point of sickness. I sold him for next to nothing to a girl who had owned him nearly 10 years before and had missed him horribly all those years. Good luck to her.

I've tried once more to buy a second horse; after I shook hands on the deal, and made arrangements to get the horse hauled to my facility, the fellow called me up and told me he couldn't bring himself to go through with it, as the horse liked to be fed peanuts in the evening, and was like the man's best friend. (He didn't like to ride, but he did like to feed the horse peanuts. Go figure.)

Fortunately I've still got Duquesne, the Stinky Dink. Do you think I would sell him? Not for any price.

Maybe the only horses that get sold are crappy ones.

Whaaaat??? Sign-Ups Start Saturday????

To novel or not to novel, that is the question.

In 2001, writing a novel seemed like an absurd idea. I took a writing class in college just so I could spend more time with Bernie, who was actually interested in writing. Uh, that would have been in 1975. Aside from letters, I never wrote again ... until November 2001, when Alex talked me into signing up for National Novel Writing Month. It was insane. It was foolish. It was sheer bliss to sit and write 50,000 words of whatever I wanted to write. No one ever had to see it; at the end of the month, I could say "I made it!" and then hit the delete button, and no one would ever know the secret words that bubbled up out of my brain. (That would be Dreamer, which was rewritten and published not so very long ago, story about a woman just trying to be a good person, reviewing her life through the experience of her dreams.) "I wrote a book," I said at the end of that November, and it was one of the finest days of my life.

Subsequent NaNoWriMo's saw the creation of Time Traveler, Character Assassin, and Out With the Trash; then there were the two completed Aser Books describing some of my adventures as a fictitious character. Three of the books are still in various stages of editing.

That's a lot of writing for someone who never intended to be a writer. I'm tired and aside from blog entries, I haven't written anything for ages. The Aser Stories, once a weekly feature of the Piker Press, have trickled off to one every four months or so.

The support forums for NaNoWriMo have grown horrendously huge, and have been taken over by hordes of people who are looking more for a venue to spew spite and contention than for the warmth and wisdom of other writers. (Well, let's add to that the flamboyant exhibitionists who just love to hear themselves hoick up more and more numbers of posts.) So there's no comfort there, no real draw.

Do I really want to sit down in front of a blank file and start hammering words, humming "No plot, no problem" to myself for 30 days and 50,000 words? Last year I sat down with a story in mind, and halfway through the month hated the very thought of sitting down and making sure I got enough words done. I don't want to hate the thought of writing.

But I am a creature of habit. After four years of this kind of craziness, I've kind of gotten used to spending November in a frenzy of word-flinging. One thing for sure, though, if I don't like what I've written, I'm going to quit. No more fighting for NaNoWords. And I want to write something fun, like Character Assassin was.

I guess I'm in.






Well, of course I do.

Death and Life, Green

Monday apparently was a day of life and death.

We kacked a fortnight lily this morning. It had grown large, and though it had beautiful flowers, it had also discovered the knack for reproducing itself everywhere. I might add that these flowers only look nice in the early morning or late evening. They hate the California sun and make it a point to shrivel up during mid-day. I could even have dealt with its need to procreate, except that it began to harbor an insidious noxious plant called bindweed under its shadow. I am at war with bindweed, and thus collaborators have to go. Goodbye, fortnight lilies. You were lovely every couple weeks if you got enough water, but snuggling up with the bindweed was the last straw.

Bindweed wraps itself around other plants and chokes them, incidentally. And it covers the plants completely, sucking up all the sunlight. And it sends roots down nearly three feet deep and sends root suckers out for yards and yards. I had it under control in my yard until my neighbor let her infestation grow. She thought it was an ornamental ground cover. Damn stuff.

Yet it was still a day for life, too. Our hopseed tree has been trying to reproduce extravagantly, also, and one of its children was hunkered behind the papyrus. I pulled it out, and after a lengthy soak in "SUPERthrive" planting supplement, we tucked it carefully into a big pot. With any luck, it will grace our patio with its shade in years to come.

The day's threat of thundershowers has weaseled off to the Sierra Mountain Range, dammit, so I have to be content with watching the lightning over the mountains to the east, and listening to my digestion rumble in lieu of thunder. Will Fritos increase the chance of midsection thunder?

Women Stuff: Men, Find Something Else to Read

I just read an article about female executives and how menopause can really be frustrating for them.

I can understand this. There gets to be a point at which a woman's body just stops producing the right hormones, and it can be a hellish experience. Things that used to be regularly cyclical stop being regular. Many unpleasant, non-cyclical surprises can be in store. As the hormonal fountain erodes, the woman can become really forgetful and foggy-minded; she can suddenly begin feeling like it's 110 degrees everywhere and pour sweat like a frightened horse; she can stop sleeping at night, experience undefined anxiety attacks, become so depressed that suicide seems like a good idea. And whatever the hell hormones do for the brain, I'm not sure, but when the estrogen stops being adequately produced, one odd comment can make the woman feel like the only good response is a machine gun.

We won't even talk about the embarrassment of shutoff of libido, the dry and painful sex, or the urinary tract incontinence. No wonder witches were portrayed as crazy old women.

Most doctors, until recently, just prescribed Hormone Replacement Therapy, which was an estrogen supplement made from the piss of pregnant female horses. Oh, good, that's the way nature intended life to be. Unfortunately, it came to light that such a potion could increase the chance of breast cancer, heart attack, or stroke.

Even after that, medical studies shunned natural solutions, saying that (even though some have been used for centuries) natural supplements don't work. Which is to say, if women have depression problems, they need to take antidepressants, and if they have physical symptoms that are annoying, they need to "cowboy up" and just deal with it. Shut up and use vaseline.

Here is me, disagreeing.

I have made use of progesterone cream from the start of my transitional years. 1/4 teaspoon a day for 21 days out of the month put me back to regular cycling until such a time came when the cycling was done. Progesterone breaks down that nasty testosterone that makes older women get NASTY Old Woman Whiskers and inexplicable zits. I have also heard that it makes uterine fibroid tumors shrink, though I myself have never been inside someone's uterus while progesterone cream is being taken to see if this actually happens.

That's a great transitional therapy, but there is nothing to prepare one for the onset of crushing depression and inability to concentrate that estrogen loss can provoke. For a while, my habit of drinking soy milk was enough, but then -- wow -- I felt like the world had caved in around me, and I could barely bring myself to leave my studio. I wasn't doing any art there to speak of, but it was familiar, and EVERYTHING AND EVERYONE ELSE wasn't.

My doctor (a wise woman) recommended black cohosh herb to try to get on top of the depression, but it does contain salicylates, and I'm not real good with aspirin. I opted to try red clover extract instead. Both these natural supplements provide a natural estrogenic compound. After about a week, my nightmarish depression eased, my memory improved, and the husband was looking better and better every day -- thumbs up on the libido, you betcha.

I'm not doing an infomercial. I just hate to see women suffer with all this stuff and not know a way to try and make it better. Talking about aging isn't popular, because we are all going to be 24 forever. However, when 24 has been doubled, and things aren't working like you remember them, there are avenues to explore. Sure, it's a pain in the ass to have to remember to use your progesterone cream and take your red clover or black cohosh each morning and your calcium/magnesium supplement before bedtime, but the alternative is worse. Choffing down a couple capsules is far more agreeable than feeling like you've gone to hell for the rest of your life.

But that's just my opinion.

A Day Spent Learning the Hard Way

I thought I was retired.

Today I spent working on the week-at-a-glance style calendar I want to have available for next month some time. Fever Dreams cartoon calendar. Fever Dreams runs in the Piker Press each week, and I've finally got enough art for a year's calendar. Great! Wonderful! Should be easy enough to format...

I showed the right-hand page template to the Editor, just to see what she thought. "Bells and whistles!" she exclaimed (more or less). "Can you like, put a nifty little sidebar right here so I can take notes in the margin?? I take notes everywhere!! And on the other page, can you put a little graph with a place for checkmarks???? I CAN HARDLY WAIT TO GET THIS!!!!"

Slinking away, trying to think of things I can feed her so that she outgrows her pants this winter, (thanks, Lydia -- great idea there) I returned to the studio to tackle Word's miserable excuse for graphics. Hours later I discovered that once you have inserted a "table" (which is nothing more than a box with lines) you cannot copy it to another location for use, nor can you insert a page before it or after it without getting lines and dismembered boxes all over the &%##!**! place. After losing most of my hair to aggravation and stress, I decided to try to make a grid in Photoshop Elements -- then I could insert it as a picture and copy it as need be. My picture was a bit lame, but I thought it would do, and went on to format the odd-numbered pages with the inserted picture graphic. For the whole year. That's 108 pages, BTW.

And then, after it was done, and my eyeballs were fried from looking at the screen and my blood pressure was ungodly high, I realized that there was an easier way to do it that would look better, too. Crap.

I thought maybe I could delete the graphic and insert one that was sized exactly the same, but nooooooooo, Word won't do that. Nothing I could do would change it, either. Scuh-rood. I deleted the whole damn thing and started over.

This is what I have so far: January, 2006.