Get 6 (a silly man joke)

A wife asks her husband, "Could you please go shopping for me and
buy one carton of milk, and if they have eggs, get 6."

A short time later the husband comes back with 6 cartons of milk.

...The wife asks him, "Why did you buy 6 cartons of milk?"

He replied, "They had eggs."

Start Phasing Insects Into Your Diet

I took to the internet in an attempt to find something to write about. My search led me a June 2011 article about an ice cream store in Columbia, Missouri that sold out of Cicada ice cream. If you were in the Midwest earlier this summer then you know that we were under attack by these 2-inch long noisemakers.  While not particularly harmful to humans, they can be pretty darn annoying, especially when its time for them to emerge in great numbers like they did this year. We humans are pretty resilient though, we won't let a swarm of three-eyed alien-looking bugs stop us from mowing our lawns or going out for coffee. We mow the lawn with a tennis racket and duck, dodge and roll to the coffeehouse while these pesky skin-shedders mistake our arms for tree branches.

Boiled Cicada ice cream anyone? Apparently so. Seems the employees of the ice cream store captured these tasty treats right in their own backyards, removed most of the critter's wings and the boiled the poor things. My question is just how old is the legal working age in Columbia, Missouri because finding playing with bugs fun was over for me at about age 5 or 6.

At least the bugs were boiled before they basted the pests in brown sugar and chocolate and mixed with brown sugar and butter flavored ice cream. This apparently wasn't a plus, however for the public health officials in Central Missouri who kindly asked the store to stop selling the treat.

Did the health official not know that in China, Malaysia, Latin America, and Burma among other places these giant bugs are skewered, deep-fried and served as a delicacy? It turns out that the public health agencies code book doesn't specifically address Cicada's as food so it was more of a nudge to get them to stop rather than an order.

Would you or did you eat any Cicada ice cream during the invasion this year? Here is an interesting idea: we Americans should start phasing insects into our diets. Every seven or thirteen years when the Cicada's emerge in great numbers we would would rely much less on other countries for our food. Think about it!

Thanks for letting me borrow your books, by the way!

I received the first 17 books in the Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter Series written by Laurell K. Hamilton. Hamilton is a St. Louis native and the only reason that I can think I may continue reading. I have managed to skim my way about halfway through the first book and I'm dieing here people. I know that I am not one to speak as I have never finished a writing project, removed my previous blog for lack of entries, never been published aside from a few websites linking to my previous blog... but Hamilton... to quote my old Jewish boss, "Oy Vay Izmir!". Actually, she may be a great writer, but I can't understand what she is writing, at least not in the first book of 20 that she copyrighted back in the 1900's (1993). She has a habit of ending lengthy detail-filled paragraphs with "Right." What does that mean? I try "ya right, that's bologna" but that doesn't make sense most of the time. Is she confirming that the over descriptive previous 3 paragraphs I just suffered through are indeed correct? I can't figure it out. Last night in particular she was making me crazy with the word "cig". Why couldn't she just say cigarette? Cig... like it makes the fact that the guy is smoking sound cool. I've determined that Hamilton's style of writing pretty much annoys me.

I enjoy reading work by Louie L'Amour and recently found a couple books by local St. Louisian Terry Dean (Letters to My Wife & If a Turtle Had Wheels) to be pleasurable reads. After trying to choke down the book by Hamilton, I have to say the biggest reason is that L'Amour and Dean don't bog down their writing with great detail. It is sufficient for them to say, "The man entered the kitchen. He could smell dinner baking in the oven." That's a fine amount of detail. It sets the stage for me, I understand what is happening because I've entered a kitchen and smelled dinner baking in the oven, got it, move on. Hamilton on the other hand, takes a page and a half to describe everything from the entrance to the kitchen, to the fact that last week the family ate chicken for dinner three times. By the end of her drawn out description of the room, even the man with his cig is drumming his fingers on the countertop waiting for the story to move on. The action stalls, the scene gets old and boring before anything begins and more than half of what she talks about is completely irrelevant to the actual story. Maybe she had a great story, visited an editor who told her she needed more detail or a longer book and poof, we are fed this piece of crap story that takes up double the space in our life because someone thought they knew better.

I was stuck with a critique like that once. I have a Paranormal-Romance book in the works. Well, I say that. What it actually has stalled as is Chapter One and a really awesome outline for the rest of the book. I can make up excuse after excuse as to why I haven't written more, but the truth is I put so much effort and love into Chapter One that now I don't know how to get from there to the end of the book. So, it sits and haunts, as any good paranormal story should! (ba-dum-ching!) I did have someone tell me I missed many windows of opportunity to use great detail and really put the person in the moment. So, like a good little writing student, I went back and added detail and more detail, tripling the size of my first chapter. The teacher loved it, she said she could really understand where my character was and put herself there. Gee, that's great, but to me if I say the character is in a library you would pretty much know she was in a building surrounded by books and quiet people.

To each their own, I say. Do not judge, I say. Do as I say and not as I do, I say. Buwahaha! I visited Hamilton's website and apparently, someone somewhere likes her work because from what I can tell she's successful for an author stuck in the Midwest. She does have an agent in New York, which is super cool for any writer, and I noticed she has a film agent in California. I want a film agent, it just sounds cool. You can visit her site at http://www.laurellkhamilton.org/



Just Write, they say

The thing about wanting to be a writer is that you must write. I hear it all the time from everywhere, everywhere being the various writing groups and folks I run into in my daily life. They all tell me 'Just Write'. Okay... well, I set up this blog to have a place to write and now it has been empty for weeks while I've been trying to figure out just what to write about.

I found myself making all sorts of excuses, too. My house is too messy, my kids are too loud. I'm the person who needs to have their Bic pen caps perfectly aligned with the writing on the side of the pen, so you can imagine how a messy house or screaming children could be a distraction.

Then came the times I would write, click spell check and the computer would yell at me about passive voice. I would rack my brain trying to re-state something in a more interesting way. Well, what is my computer doing reading my work anyway?! I've since figured out how to consider the suggestion, then ignore the passive voice indicators. It actually took me weeks to get over. I nearly had to enter therapy for fear of speaking only in passive voice.

Even though I'm over worrying profusely about passive voice, it haunts me still. I was at dinner the other night with a group of people, not having thought of passive voice in days, giddily strumming up writing ideas in my head, half listening to what everyone was saying around me when a writing professor decided to  jump upon his personal soapbox and talk openly about how much passive voice irks him so! I couldn't believe it. Was this man psychic? Psychic, not only, but able to tap into out innermost fears and present them to us at a pub over spinach artichoke dip and hot wings?  He laid my passive voice fears right out there next to the ranch dipping sauce for the entire table to observe. I knew he would first, give me two choices and make me guess which sentence was passive, without my computer to bark at me, and then I knew he would hush the entire barroom while I tried to restate the sentence in a non-passive voice.

Of course, none of that actually occurred, but for the few seconds it took for my palms to sweat I worried. On our drive home later that evening discussing the actual meeting we attended before retiring to the pub, I replayed my passive voice fears inside my head. My friend was none the wiser about what I was actually thinking about, but she probably did wonder later why I wanted to talk about everything we had already discussed. (Yes, every once in a great while I get just a glimpse of what it must be like to be a man.)  

Passive voice fears aside, I know that I must sit at this computer and write. My children will not be quiet, my house will not remain clean for very long, my bic pens will have crooked lids and I must write.  

Besides knowing that I must stop making excuses for not writing something, even if it is just jibawacky like this, I know that I must write in order to get better at the art of writing. I visited a blog recently I used to read often but haven't been to in a year. It was actually good, the blogger's writing had improved. It was inspirational. This and the wonderful fact that I have magnificent friends and family breathing down my neck and yelling into my ears to write...  thank you and enjoy the suffering you have provoked, it's all your fault.

The Colour of My Love - a poem

A poet I am not. In my search for inspiration for a note to my sister-in-law on her wedding day, I came across this poem. I found it quite lovely and wanted to share.

The Colour of My Love

by: David Foster and Arthur Janov

I'll paint a sun to warm your heart
Knowing that we'll never part.
I'll draw the years all passing by
So much to learn, so much to try.

I'll paint my mood in a shadow blue,
Paint my soul to be with you.
I'll sketch your lips in shaded tones,
Draw your mouth to my own.

I'll trace a hand to wipe your tears
And trace a look to calm your fears.
A silhouette of dark and light
To hold each other oh so tight.

I'll paint the stars in the evening sky,
Draw the light into your eyes,
A touch of love, a touch of grace,
To softly fall on your moonlit face.

And with this ring our lives will start,
Let nothing keep our love apart.
I'll take your hand to hold in mine,
And be together through all time.