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Month: July 2016

Walls Never Work

So a certain figure currently in the news keeps talking about building a wall. (Don’t worry, it’s just an oblique mention.) Whenever I hear about it, I make the comment “Walls never work. Haven’t these people seen Pacific Rim?” I mean, look. Tonight I was reminded of this, as the “play pen” cage I’d purchased for kitten-containment was breached in less than half an hour. First they climbed it. I fortified it, making climbing impossible. So they jumped it. Two foot high pen, two month old kittens, and both were on top of it before I could even get it properly assembled! We’re fostering two kittens for the Humane Society. They get the kittens socialized and growing up in a home, not a shelter. We get two energetic and adorable furballs that we don’t have to pay to support get to give back when they grow up a bit more. This is Sunset. The mighty hunter. Her royal highness. “Your nightstand? I think you mean the royal bed.” This is Stormy. AKA Flo-Jo and/or Usain Bolt, because this kitten is fast. AKA Piranha, because if the food offered is not to her liking, she is quite willing to explore living food sources. After all, I don’t really need ten toes and ten fingers, do I? Due to a lack of other options (I’m the only one with a vaguely clean bedroom, and the kittens have to be contained and kept away from our dog and cat), these babies are rooming…

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The Magical Fantasy Dream Castle Retreat

Guys, I’ll be honest with you. Right now I’m struggling. I’ve had a bad cold/cough on top of impossible work deadlines all month, and that came after a hectic June and…to be honest, this has been going on for a while. Luckily, I only have to get through this week and then it’s on to Internet-detox-and-nature-with-family time. But that’ll be over soon enough. I need a better solution. So I give you… THE MAGICAL FANTASY DREAM CASTLE RETREAT (There’s no picture here. You’ll see why in a moment.) One day, when I’m as rich as J.K. Rowling (hey, a writer can dream), I’ll build this castle. It’ll be in the mountains and on a fjord at the same time, with a deep dark forest behind and a quiet cove in front. There will be horses and a sailboat and a canoe and a hammock and a hedge maze. The mountains will have caves and high passes and valleys beyond. The forest will have trails (but not too many) and brooks and glades. There will be mighty trees, and a treehouse worthy of an elf or an Ewok, and a magical white deer (or maybe it’s a unicorn) that can only be glimpsed on a full-moon night. Inside, there will be the library from Beauty and the Beast. There will be a grand staircase and stained-glass windows. The bedroom will have a four-poster bed with a canopy, and a window seat, and a balcony. The bathroom will have a hot tub.…

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A Creative Interlude

Good morning! Do you ever have those times when you really should be working on something, but something else comes along that sounds like way more fun? Or, like, it doesn’t matter if anything ever actually does get done, because planning is fun? And shopping for supplies, and picturing doing it, and… …anyway, this is me right now. And what I’d like to be doing, at least theoretically, is sewing. Not sure what exactly has brought this on. It’s probably a combination of having too many writing projects going, the fact that I hate half my wardrobe, and the fact that I used to sew all the time, but haven’t touched my machine in four…maybe five…years. So first I went into the planning stage. My planning stage mostly involved reading tons of blogs about upcycling clothing and starting a Pinterest board. I’ve also checked out some sewing pattern books from the library. Somewhere in the Pinterest stage I went from upcycling clothes to just making clothes from scratch. That might be because I actually did a couple of upcycling projects. The kids and me made slouch hats and arm warmers from old sweaters and hot glue, and I also took an overly large t-shirt I got from giving blood and turned it into a workout tank top. Upcycling urge conquered, I guess. So now we’re on the sewing from scratch phase. At the end of last week, the small, somewhat mobile one and I hit our local Joann’s, where I…

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TV Shows and Endings

This is actually Siri’s scheduled slot, but since I will be out of town in two weeks, we decided to switch. So that meant coming up with a topic rather quickly (a few hours!). Since Castle was canceled, I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about TV shows lately. TV shows that had either crap endings or died too soon in particular. It has gotten to the point where I am terrified to get invested in a TV show because it could end prematurely and end on a cliffhanger.  Or just end, period. There were a bunch of TV shows coming out this past fall that I would have loved to check out (Minority Report, Limitless, Quantico, for an example) but I worried that they’d get the ax and/or end on a damn cliffhanger. Those are absolutely the worst, because let’s face it, the chances for a revival are so slim. And it’s heartbreaking. (Of those three, I believe Quantico is the last one standing.) So, let’s get on with the list, shall we? In no particular order, they are: 1) Forever. Canceled after the first season. Had an interesting premise — a man who works as a medical examiner and is immortal. This drew me in because 1) it wasn’t the average police procedural show, and 2) why is Henry immortal  and can he find a way to finally die? Plus there was a glimmer of a potential romance with the woman he works with, Jo. I don’t know the final resolution because as soon…

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