Thankful Things

I'm totally stealing this from another blogger (with a link to her site below), but it's such a great idea I had no choice but to steal. I've honestly never done this before, and I can't think why. Thanksgiving Day has never been about the food, at least for me (I like the term "turkey day" about as much as others like "xmas" being used for "Christmas"). Football also isn't a draw, as you probably know. But thankfulness, well, that's a big deal to me.

So here it is, my GRATITUDES, my top ten list of things I'm thankful for:

1. Other bloggers--like Sia McKye--think of fantastic blog topics so that I don't have to. And my wonderful fellow bloggers also encourage me, offer me fantastic advice, and show me that I'm not alone in the world.
2. My online and face-to-face community sees the world in new ways and helps me broaden my mind. They remind me what's important and also remind me when stuff is coming up locally (Thank you, Facebook people!)
3. My kids are both helpful, emotionally stable, caring people. They try new things and still take my advice, and though I know it's because they are not yet teenagers, I'm grateful they want my input and encouragement, even if it's just for now.
4. My sister and I are still friends, despite all the stuff we've both been through. Lots of stuff, pretty much all family-related. Yet she's never given up on me, never taken sides against me, never done anything but thing I'm great (and the feeling is mutual!).
5. I still have hope, despite taking off my rose-colored glasses more than twenty years ago. I don't pretend that evil isn't there, but I believe one voice can help, and I am strong enough to speak truth.

Isn't he cute? Here's the turkey
we won't be eating this year!
(Photo credit: NWTF)

6. I have yet to really feel any signs that I'm getting old. No creaking when I get up, no back pain. I'm more fit now than I was when I was half my age. I still have all my faculties, too--okay, so my memory is going, but that's been happening since I was twelve.
7. The hubby and I still care deeply about each other--after all these years, we are still best friends. He neatened the house last night and made dinner. Said it was because he knew I'd be cooking today, and he wanted me to rest the day before. He also said all he wanted for dessert on Thanksgiving was cookies--bless that man!
8. I don't have to cook a turkey. Hurray for being vegetarian! I get to start cooking around 11:30, and we'll be eating our tasty meal by 2!
9. I have time to do the things I love: paint, sing, sew, write, play piano. And though I still don't have enough time, I am not so overloaded with stuff that I don't have a chance to spend time playing.
10. Christmas is just around the corner, and since we don't do much for gifts at our house, I don't have to shop on Black Friday. In fact, I don't even have to enter a store at all. I can get what I need online.

There it is. I have a ton more to be thankful for--a TON--but today these are the gratitudes uppermost in my mind.

What are your gratitudes?

Have a fantastic Thanksgiving Day, people. And hugs to everyone!

Not Dead

I'm sure you thought I was. Or you forgot I had ever been alive.

But any dark thoughts you had mulling over my demise are mere fantasy. I'm alive, I had a great summer off, and I have plans for this year.

One plan, of course, is to keep blogging next summer, and not drop off the face of the earth again. But next summer is a long way off, and my focus is on the now.

So stay tuned. Much news will be coming your way, and the revamping I've done of my blog so far is only the beginning. I hope to catch up with all of you on your own blogs, so if you've missed me and want me to visit super soon, just leave me a nagging message below.

Warning: I'm About to be Very Lame

NaNoWriMo is imminent. Yup, in just a day and a half I'm disappearing off the blogosphere.

You might wonder, in a few weeks, if I've disappeared off the face of the planet. Or died.

I haven't. Do not worry. I'm going to have to ignore most of you, though, for I know if I have an hour to check blogs and make comments, I need to use that precious hour to make my word count for the day. I only managed half my goal last year, so I really want to make it this time.

So, adieu for now. Love you all, really, but I'll probably be MIA until I put my tree up for Christmas. If I post, it will likely be a NaNo poem, rapidly written and brief. I've even written a poetic lament for it on my Not Writing blog

If YOU are participating this year, though, please let me know in the comments. Tell me your name through the NaNoWriMo website, and I'll buddy you! I'm Shakespeare824, and right now I only have two buddies, so I could use a few more.

Writing=Tiling

At long last, more than a month after I finished the &*%$(@ project, my tortured fingers have recovered from grouting long enough to write about my summer tiling experience. As with my gardening entries, I managed to find quite a few similarities between tiling and writing, and the time it took gave me a chance to mull over these nuances and, perhaps, improve my writing in the process. At least these offer me a way of perceiving the process of writing differently.

So that you can see I know what I'm doing, here's a picture of my finished tiling project:

Looks pretty fantastic, doesn't it? And I'm an amateur, too. First time tiling ever. I'd make a long, arduous blog about this (and brag a whole lot more), but that would be too much to remember (and endure), so I'll start with the first part of the tiling process, preparation:

1. Prep the space for tiling. That means tearing down the previous tile, which in this case was a glossy white bathroom tile intermixed with bright, ugly wildflowers. The eighties-inspired bathroom look was pretty awful, but I have to admit that the bare wall devoid of eighties tile looked worse. Once it was chucked off, though, I knew there was no going back.

In the same way, revising my novels (i.e., "ripping them to shreds") often takes a similar path. I create a new document, name it novel revision #2 (or #7, or #25, depending on the novel), and then paste chapters of the old document in one at a time, revising them fully before pasting in a new chapter. At some point, I realize the rest of the novel is complete crap, and I stop pasting. It is then that the old draft disappears back into my novel folder and I begin composing for real. Tearing down is really hard, and turning my back on entire chapters (or the whole second half of a book) is even harder, but sometimes it's necessary.

2. Plan out where you are putting tile. I made a template of my backsplash, especially the part above my stove (shown in the picture above), in paper so that I could fit the tile into it on the floor of my dining room before I set the stuff in thinset mortar on the real wall. I even used the little spacers to set them apart from each other properly, so that my measurements would be exact. Why? Well, it gave me a chance to see the finished product. In fact, my plan changed, for I realized the accent tiles would be set too high on my template, making them almost invisible, and I arranged them differently. I even changed the angle during the planning stage, opting for a far more graceful diamond pattern instead of block squares. Had I waited to plan until I started mortaring all the tiles, I would have two choices: Live with the inferior setting, or tear the whole thing down and start over. Neither one would have been any fun.

Sure, when one is in the throes of NaNoWriMo, one can just applaud oneself for getting the requisite 1,667 words written each day--or even throw a party when one writes twice that many. But writing off the cuff, at least for me, means shredding most of it somewhere down the line, and I will have far less work to do in revisions if I write a plot outline and plan out the characters before I really get the novel going.

3. Tiling happens in a particular order, which cannot be changed. I had to prep the space, plan out where the tile was going, cut the tile, mortar the tiles up, let them dry completely, then grout. Had I tried doing any of these things in a different order, I would have messed the whole thing up. Had I mortared the tile over the existing tile, it wouldn't have stuck. Uncut tiles would never fit together. Had I grouted before mortaring, the grout itself would have no hope of keeping those tiles up. They needed to be glued first. The order of the process matters.

That seems self-explanatory, but writing's steps also follow the same logic. If one hasn't written anything--or if the writing has fundamental problems with character or plot or content that have yet to be addressed--editing for grammar is silly. I need to prepare for the writing, write it out, revise for content, then revise for grammar, then send it out to beta readers, then revise again, and only then (at the earliest) can I call the novel finished. The steps aren't arbitrary rules created by your much-hated English teacher. They are necessary to help you create the best quality work you can. Only a supreme writing genius can avoid some of these, and I don't know one of those.

Now that the preparation is done, other elements happen. I'll cover them in another blog as soon as I can.

Happy Mediocrity Day to Me!

[Disclaimer: I am really okay. One of my beloved readers actually called me this morning to make sure I was okay after she read this post, so I didn't want any of you to get scared. I'm pretty chipper this morning, but perhaps that doesn't come across in the tone of my post below:]

I've been seeing several celebrations by other blogs lately--five year anniversaries, one- and two-year milestones, so I thought I'd check to see how long I'd had this blog. I know I started blogging on Today.com first (and sometime in August, 2007), but I moved from there when my sister and so many others were locked out of their accounts when Today.com didn't like what they were saying.

But this is not an anniversary. It seems my first blog here was in April 23, 2009. So I've been blogging one year, four months, and 17 days. Wow! That is so not any kind of milestone! Fantastic!

Oh, and it's not like I've been blogging every day, either. In one month I only wrote six blogs, which comes out to about one blog every five days (see, I can do simple math). That's pretty awful! How much more mediocre can I possibly be?

And this proves something, and it's something I need to remind myself of every now and then: I do not have to be the best at something (or even really good at it) to have fun. I can write crappy poetry, and as long as I toss in a good one now and then (or at least one that rhymes) I can keep my sweet readers coming back. I can offer gardening/editing advice, and people take me seriously.

Now that I think about it, I'm pretty mediocre (and happy) in several facets of my life: I have written three unpublished novels, I play piano badly, my paintings are far from professional, my mom skills are questionable, my housecleaning...well...let's just say Merry Maids wouldn't hire me, I'm only an adjunct English teacher (even with a doctorate), and I still look a bit like I'm wrestling pigs in Zumba. But I'm happy. No gold medals, no sign of physical grace or exceptional talent, but I guess that doesn't really matter much to me.

Today, I embrace my mediocrity. And I embrace all of you (though that's really not comfortable through a laptop--oof!), and thank you for sticking around these last one year, four months and 17 days. You help make my life exceptional!

So, how about you? Anything you delight in being mediocre at? (Notice how I used a preposition at the end of that sentence? Cool, huh?)

A New Pact

I'm really sorry to have to do this, but I've been fighting myself every day for most of the summer. You see, while I've been involving myself in all sorts of activities, from reading books I love (or know I will love, once I read them), to playing piano, to camping, and even to working on my two new online courses, I have NOT been writing every day.

So here it is. From this blog on, I am no longer allowed to write my blog on a given day until I work for AT LEAST one hour on my writing projects. I don't have to choose a certain project, but the one I work on has to be one of the projects I have on hand (there are plenty of them!)... and I have to work on it for a good, long while. 

If you don't hear from me for the next few days, it's because my id is still holding off my superego. However, if I write tomorrow, it's because I am finally on task again. I can certainly use any encouragement I can get. I still haven't figured out why I'm fighting it (since the urge is still there, and it's the reason I get up every morning), but I haven't truly spent time on my writing in about a month. It's time for me to stop putting it off, stop leaving it at the bottom of my to-do list for the day. I intend to stay up at night--late, if necessary--if only to make sure I keep doing what I love. 

Wish me luck! And I hope to be able to blog VERY soon!