GUESS WHO'S HAVING A BABY?

No, no, Mom...relax! It's not me. The surgery worked, and besides which, I'm married. You know what that means...no more icky sex stuff like I had in my degenerate freewheeling years...

Join me is a huge HUZZAH for Trants and Englebertius, who are about to embark on the largest adventure of their lives. The happy dance will be scheduled shortly, and you're all invited to come, bearing booties.

Not baring bootys. That's what got Trants in this situation in the first place. I have it on very good authority.

Hooray for Weekends!

After a long week, I'd love 48 hours to curl up with a pile of good books, an endless pitcher of iced tea, and suitably brain-dead action movies on the tube.

Instead, I'll be taking children to town, grocery shopping, wrestling this house into some kind of order, going to see Tim's friends, and perhaps, if I'm lucky, get to watch Meet the Press with a minimum of background screaming.

But soon they'll be teenagers and then I'll have long bouts of disgruntled silence between the slamming of the doors. That sounds loverly, despite assurances from all the friends who have teenagers that it is anything but.

We'll see. Check in in oh, six years or so.

Ten Things Meme

Gacked from "The Woman Also Writes", the cyber home of the very talented Tenille.

Ten Things I Know About Writing:

10. You are not your narrator.

9. No matter what you write, you will NEVER be comfortable showing it to your mother.

8. Everyone thinks they have a book inside them. They will want you to read/write/critique/co-author it for them. For free. And then get insulted when you don't.

7. You will learn not to care about that.

6. Great stories come from strange places. Be constantly open.

5. Dialog is your friend. However, it is not exposition. Confuse the two at your peril.

4. Be prepared for the fact that once you step foot on the road of the writer, you will never again be 'not working'. Every minute, awake and asleep, belongs to the Story God.

3. The ability to write well yourself in no way diminishes your envy of those who write very well.

2. People can't read what you mean. They only read what you wrote. You must shed all notions of what your readers already know before you start to compose. Otherwise, you will assume too much.

1. Clarity beats clever every time.

Tagged to all my writing buds, especially she who floats crow feathers down from gothic ceilings.

I am SO happy!

My technologically adept friends will not be impressed by this news, but I'm thrilled beyond belief.

As a reward to myself for finishing a client's book (at least the first draft, I don't need much provocation for a reward) I took a leap of faith, hooked my speakers back up to the computer, visited www.wamc.org and voila! Public radio in my office -- my beloved station that I cannot pick up on any radio in the house except if:

It is raining
The rain is coming down at a 20% angle
The sun is shining perversely through the clouds
And
Both children are being angelic

These circumstances seldom, if ever, coordinate for me. But now the station comes in crystal clear, A+ quality. Hooray!!!!

Nature Pops Up In The Darndest Places

En route to a client meeting today saw:

8 wild turkeys
and
1 porcupine.

I bet this would never happen if I lived in Detroit.

Busy Chicken

A brief note, because as always, a mountain of work awaits. I have been a very busy chicken...more than I'd ever imagined I'd be...which is wonderful and scary, but mostly wonderful. Very jazzed about my current projects, great ideas, great stories, great clients, great never ending coffee pot.

Weekends off are going to be de rigeur, to keep my head from exploding. I expect y'all to call me on it if I slip.

Unless, of course, it's important.

And isn't it all important?

Lost Skills

A wonderful day spent with my friend Shirley, who knows all sorts of things about all sorts of things...gardening, wild edibles, sewing and history...we walked and talked and ate fluffernutters.

Then, hooray, a check came in the mail, and off we went to the grocery store. The provisioning Gods were smiling, for chicken leg quarters were .39/pound and other things also markedly reduced (except oranges, which is too bad, for we are going through oranges at an insane rate lately -- almost 30 a week!) and I filled the trunk for $40. Best of all: Ice cream was 50 cents a half gallon, so I bought three half gallons, only then realizing I had a 40 mile drive home in 72 degree heat. Did that stop me? Hell no...although I was not perhaps as thrilled as I might be upon finding myself trapped behind a slow moving convoys of confused bingo-seekers.

Which means I still have some money to go on a Jo-annes is closing shopping trip tomorrow. Prob won't get to buy much, but will get to see Charity, my uber-researching shopping goddess, and get some trimmy stuff for the bottom of a purple dress I want to make for H. And perhaps some yarn, for a big secret project and a little secret project and another project to satisfy my hubby who does naught but whine.

Hooray for me!

Too Funny

While playing on her Disney Phone, Nadia now answers every call:

"Hello! This is Cynthia Potts."

Think she's listened to too many business calls?

Firebug?

Apparently we have an arsonist in downtown Plattsburgh. Read more here about how four fires started in a four block radius. Happy Easter, eh?

Build a Better Bunny

Little tidbits of maternal wisdom you learn along the way:

The day before Easter is not the day to go Chocolate Bunny Shopping

Buy only those jelly beans large enough not to fit in your toddler's nose

When your child gets too much easter egg dye on her hands, it will invariably remain only on her middle finger, like some obscene Iraqi voter

There's a reason you can't use ziploc baggies as pastry bags, only to be discovered whilst one is frosting a bunny shaped cake

Your dog, normally unmoved by all avian droppings, will be unable to resist chewing up carefully hidden Easter eggs. Plan accordingly.

A Literary Meme

Gacked from The Purple Book of Ithiliana (which is now rather green)

1. Grab the nearest book.
2. Open it to page 161.
3. Find the fifth sentence
4. Post the text of the sentence in your journal along with these instructions.
5. Don’t search around and look for the coolest book you can find. Use what’s actually next to you.

Mine:

Neurologists, whose dreams are different from those of other folks, dream of finding a patient with this syndrome.

From: The Midnight Disease, by Alice Flaherty

But I like the NEXT sentence even better. "When I was a resident, we thought we had found one, but it turned out he was just from Montreal".

I've often thought that being from Montreal was an illness...who knew?

From Seti to Strip Search

This guy was looking for aliens and might wind up in Guantanamo...talk about curiousity killing the cat!

(Mind you, hacking NASA's computers is dumb, dumb, dumb, and not recommended by yours truly! even if it can get you a mainline connection to whoever is out there)

This story is from ZDNet, who keeps emailing me wonderful tidbits although I'm not sure why.

ZDNet Tags:
Hacking
Federal government
Legal
LONDON--A British former systems administrator who faces extradition to the U.S. if convicted of hacking American military computers will learn his fate next month.
Gary McKinnon appeared in court in London on Wednesday, in the latest stage in a protracted legal process. His defense has argued that he should not be extradited, as he could be tried under the tough antiterrorism laws in the U.S., sent to Guantanamo Bay and imprisoned for up to 60 years.
On Wednesday, the prosecution produced an unsigned note from the U.S. Embassy, which they claimed was a guarantee that McKinnon would not be tried under Military Order No. 1, which allows suspected terrorists to be tried under military law.
However, the defense argued that the note was not signed and therefore not binding. The defense called Clive Stafford-Smith, a U.S. lawyer who has defended Guantanamo Bay inmates, as a witness. Stafford-Smith argued that the note would not prevent McKinnon from being treated as a terrorist.
"(U.S. President Bush) has a very strong view that he has legislative authority that is not trammeled by the legislature," Stafford-Smith said.
McKinnon also indicated that he wasn't convinced that the unsigned note would protect him. "It's not worth the paper it's written on," he said outside the court.
The case was adjourned until May 10, when a final decision will be made on whether McKinnon can be extradited.
McKinnon is charged with illegally accessing 97 U.S. government computers, run by NASA and the U.S. military, and causing $700,000 worth of damage over a 12-month period starting in February 2001.
McKinnon, from North London, has admitted that he accessed some U.S. military computers, but has denied causing serious damage. The UFO enthusiast has claimed that he was searching through government systems for evidence of extraterrestrial life.

Virginia Woolf aint got nothing on me!

A room of one's own indeed. What a working writer needs is a room the toddler won't enter, climb upon some precarious desk drawers, plummet to the carpet, where she lands upon some precariously stacked dishes (stacked, of course, by the previously mentioned toddler), where she smashes them to smithereens, with attendant crying, scraping of the back, and needing some poorly deserved comfort, after which she will then cling to one's leg like an adorable, tow-headed, sobbing leech while one tries to write constructively about Free Comic Book Day.

No, what one needs is large rolls of duct tape, to fasten aforementioned children to the wall so they can passively watch TV while Mama writes. Or, you know, a husband who might think, Hmm, perhaps I should entertain the freaking children while my wife who works her ass off to support me, but as we all know, I'm not a fantasy writer here.

Bitter much? No, not me.

At least I've got my secret to keep me grinning whilst I adhere the baby to the wall with long strips of the almighty duct tape.

The Power of Secret Joy

I have a little secret. It's something I can't tell. *At least not until I've been released from my vow of relative silence by the secret owner* But it's blissful and wonderful, and I've been smiling like an idiot ever since I stopped screaming with joy.

Which has been very handy today, when I've had a wee bit of stress. Idiots broke into my sister's house and stole her perfume and toaster oven (They were promptly caught, the secondary market in perfume is rife with narcs desperate to just cut a deal man!) Tim hurt his fool self somehow and is moaning in bed like a freshly belayed whale. I've got oodles of work, so I'm blissful...but a serious shortage of funds, so I'm not overly blissful... and did I mention I've yet to do my taxes yet?

But I don't care, cuz I gots my secret.

Thank you secret mongers...you know who you are.

Calling all bibliophile cooks

Right now things are in the tentative, early planning stages (Read: I got this idea last week and it won't let me go!) but in April of Next Year, I'd like to host Plattsburgh's first edible book festival. There are edible book festivals held across the country every April, either as fundraisers or just for the hell of it, and I think it's a brilliant idea. So let's have one.

I'm thinking it could be a great fundraiser for:

NNYC Center for Independence (Andrew's Organization, and we *LOVE* Andrew!)
Literacy Volunteers (It's books...and you eat them!)
or the Interfaith Food Shelf (It's food...and you read it!)

And perhaps it could be held at

The Comfort Inn
The NCCCA
or
The Crete Center or the Fieldhouse

I bet we could get TV coverage, media and culinary sponsorship, and have a hell of a good time. There could be an amateur/pro class split, with prizes for each....

Or I might be the only one who thinks this is a really cool idea. I'm turning to you, Blogosphere...what do you think? Can I have my book and eat it too?

Here's a Plot Twist For You

What if Judas wasn't the bad guy after all?

Read this NYTimes Article.

If you have no idea what this is about, thanks a bloody lot. You're doing your part to prove Pat Buchanan right.

The Wee Hours of the Morning

and again I can't sleep. This has been happening every night this week, always at 3 am. Not a terribly useful time to be wide awake, as I *know* I should be sleeping and don't want to get involved in anything... sigh.

Some links I've been meaning to post:

WWW.Bloglines.com From the Lovely Lenka -- scan dozens more blogs regularly! Come on, you know you're not content with the multitude you already visit! Of course, it could be used to organize your regular reading, but what's the point of not overloading the information highway? (See why I don't do any pro writing now?)

A Year Without Shopping

Apparently, it's suddenly very cool not to consume things. Judith Levine didn't buy anything new for a year (aside from essential items) and got a book deal out of the fact. A cadre of six were on the Today show this morning, espousing the glories of buying used.

Explain to me why when rich people choose not to consume it's newsworthy, while when entire towns, nay, entire regions of this country, have no other choice but to buy second hand or simply go without and it goes unremarked.

Buy nothing new for a year? Bloody amateurs. I can go a decade standing on my head.

A great deal of nothing

Did a lot of research, some painfully slow writing (hours spent: 4 words records: 914!) scheduled some interviews, brainstormed with my most delightful client, embarked on a new project sure to satisfy my anal retentive side, and at the end of the day, I still feel like I've gotten nothing done.

This must be exactly what student teachers feel like when grading vocabulary tests.

Necessary evils and all that.

Rainy Days and Mondays

Actually work pretty well for me, thank you! Getting tremendous amounts of work done, two suprise assignments came in over the phone, a call for submissions that's got my interest, and lots of great ideas. Feeling pretty positive today, which is a nice change.

Want to take a moment to plug "Alan Moore Spells it out" the best writing book I've read in a while. On one of my traditional haunts, they're talking about what writing books influence you, and that one's been good to me.

Curmudgeons never die

So if you wonder at the silence, it's just me being cranky here. I don't want to bore you with repetitions of every evil thing I'm thinking (Those of you fool enough to give me your phone numbers JUST HAVE TO DEAL!) and at the moment I"m having a hard time coming up with anything that doesn't cause an instant headache.