Soup dream

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Ever had a dream you dismiss a nonsense dream, until you really think about it?

I just had a very weird one.

In the dream a large group of people came over for dinner. I had expected two people, but those two had decided to bring a few more, so I had ten extra people sitting around my table waiting to be fed.

Gulp! It might not be a true nightmare, but it would certainly freak me out if it happened in real life!

Anyway, the only thing I could come up with on the spur of the moment was soup. So I brought a big pot of soup to the table and started serving.

I must have overestimated how much I had because I was a little too generous with the first servings. The last people got just a few tablespoons in their bowls.

But that’s not the worst part. The soup I’d chosen to serve only had two ingredients, lettuce and water. Yep, I’d dumped several heads of iceberg lettuce into a big pot of water, brought it to a boil, and called it dinner.

Yuck!

Anyway, the dream disturbed me more than it should, so I sat down and thought it through. I needed to figure why I was so bothered by such a silly little dream.

It was easier to figure out than I thought it would be. Probably because I know my own mind pretty well.

I’ve been very lax this summer, letting pretty much everything cut into my writing time. Family, the kitchen remodel, the dog, sunshine, yard work, you name it, I’ve let it disrupt my schedule.

My brain is smart enough to know it’ll starve without some real writing time.

Just like I was starving my guests with that lettuce soup.

Now that I realize what’s going on in my noggin, it’s up to me to feed the hungry creature inside my head. Time to put my writing fingers to work and cook up something nourishing for my brain to enjoy.

Let’s hope I can come up with something more substantial than lettuce soup!

Hotel Monte Vista

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We spent two nights in a haunted hotel, and saw…well…nothing. I guess the ghosts weren’t in the mood for a chat, or a thump, or whatever those ghosts are known to do.

I’ll admit that I didn’t sleep well, which some people say is a sign of ghostly presence.

But those people probably weren’t taking into account the Karoake bar downstairs. That was one loud hotel!

Frankly, I might have gotten a decent amount of sleep if the ghost had made itself useful and plugged my ears with its ghostly fingers.

But the ghost refused to be so kind. So sleep was sporadic, and when I dreamed, it was of distressed cats howling in the distance.

I wonder why?

 

Mundane or hero

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Okay, I’m just going to say it. They’ve got it all wrong. And by they I mean the writers of all those books, tv shows, and movies that spout the message that being a hero is a lonely, sad existence.

Sure, it makes for good drama. The audience feels the the hero’s soul-scaring loneliness and a connection is forged. All of us feel a little lonely sometime. We can relate.

But it’s carried out too far. We, the audience, may yearn for the hero’s happiness, but deep in our hearts we know it’ll never happen. Time and again we’ve witnessed heroes win wars with muscle, only to lose everything on the emotional front.

We’ve seen it so often it has become ingrained in our culture. A hero must be sad and alone. That’s the way it is.

Nonsense. We’re letting ourselves be deluded by some lonely soul in the distant past who had problems with relationships and did a Tom Sawyer to cover it up.

Only chance to be happy is to be mundane?
Don’t you believe it!

Be a HERO.
Have FRIENDS.
Fall in LOVE, you gorgeous hero you.
You’ll be HAPPY you did.

 

Road trip adventure – Bedrock (Arizona)

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Next stop, Bedrock.

That’s right. It’s possible to visit the land of the Flintstones, right in Arizona!

We didn’t know exactly what to expect. It added 40 miles to the trip, so when we pulled into the parking lot we were disappointed. Sure there were a couple of Bedrock-looking buildings and a dinosaur, but not enough for the long drive.

Until we noticed that one of the buildings (the only one we could actually go inside) was a diner. We knew we had a long drive before we got anywhere else, so we decided to see what they had to eat.

Duh! It was the entrance into Bedrock! The parking lot was thankfully just that, a parking lot.

We paid our entrance fee and went inside. I’m so glad we did!

Because what we found was the entire town of Bedrock. Houses, playground, school, theater, gas station, post office, cars, dinosaurs, doctor’s office, jail, etc. Whatever you’d expect in a town, it was there.

Bedrock playground.  0512161723Gas Station

The insides of the buildings were staged appropriately. So the doctor’s office had giant teeth, and the post office looked ready for a town meeting.Post Office Doctor's office

I wonder what this guy did to get this long of a jail sentence?

JailMy very favorite part was the Goatasaurus’s that housed the cutest, friendliest little goat you’ve ever seen!

Goatasaurus'sGoatasaurus

Maaaa!

Off to London! Bridge, that is.

Road trip adventure – meteor crater

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Lately I’ve been feeling a little stagnant. Like I need to see more of the world.

After all, a writer needs to experience the world in order to write about it.

So instead of flying my daughter home from college, I flew out to Arizona and we drove back to Seattle.

That’s right, your eyes are not deceiving you. We drove. An old fashioned road trip. Through deserts, mountains, forests, and very small towns. Just the two of us.

The mission:
Experience as many quirky/interesting sites as possible and still get home in less than a week. And in case you’re wondering, to find the quirky things you need to take the road less traveled.

So that’s what we did.

Our first stop was a meteor crater, which we found to be more educational than quirky. But hey, you have to start somewhere, even if it is with a giant dent in the earth.

crater

 

Out of the blue

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I was taking a bath when out of the blue this conversation popped into my head.

“What are you doing?”

“I’m doing what I should have done a long time ago. I’m making a hole in the universe big enough to send you home.”

Where this odd little piece of dialog came from I haven’t a clue, nor do I know what I’m supposed to do with it. All of a sudden it was just there, clear and firmly implanted in my brain.

Hmm.

Tulips

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tulips

Two years ago my husband and I went with family to the tulip festival. We were so inspired that we planted our own little festival of colors.

What do you think?

tulips16

 

Okay, so maybe our tulips aren’t quite festival-worthy. But it’s a start!

Excerpt – DTA2

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The title for this book still eludes me. Maybe by the time I finish the rewrites something perfect will pop into my head.

This moment is the catalyst that sets everything in motion.

“Don’t you get it, Annabel?” Philip asked gloomily, “She didn’t give me a fighting chance. And she never will. She’s prejudiced against me. Just because of the way I look.”

Annabel took a step back and examined her husband from head to toe. When love began to cloud her eyes she shook her head and shoulders several times, assumed an arrogant stance with hands on hips and chin held high, and looked again. Her intention was to put herself into Dr. Morgan’s shoes so she could see Philip through her eyes. After a few moments of this she managed to see him as if for the first time, the way Dr. Morgan saw him, and she nodded her head thoughtfully.

“Does that mean…?” Philip began, but stopped short as the fragile bud of hope sprouting in his heart was drowned by a wave of gloom.

Annabel was studying her husband’s face and did not miss the wave of gloom that extinguished the flicker of hope so quickly and thoroughly. It pained her to see her husband like this, depressed and vulnerable.

Maybe she could help him, just this once. She’d made hundreds, maybe thousands of trips through time for the greater good. Philip was a good man. Wouldn’t helping him also be serving the greater good?

Annabel studied her husband’s face for a moment or two longer before she spoke. “I might,” she conceded warily, “be able to make a few careful adjustments.”

Here’s the logic

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When I went to library school we were taught to cater to boys when we selected books for the juvenile section of our public libraries.  We were told to stuff the shelves with books filled with male characters, male characters, and more male characters.

Here’s the logic:

Girls already love to read and need no further encouragement. Besides, they’re not picky and will read books with male protagonists, male villains, male supporting cast, etc.

Boys, on the other hand, don’t like to read. So to even the playing field we need to bend over backwards to encourage them. And since boys won’t read books with female protagonist, or too many female characters, we need fill the shelves with boy-appropriate books.

To make this logic more logical, we were also taught that the content of the library should reflect the interests of its patrons.

So a library situated in a hipster part of town should be loaded with hipster content. One near the beach should carry an abundance of books with a nautical theme.

But a public library situated next door to an all girl’s school still needed to focus on books with boys as the main characters. Just in case one of the poor little fellas wandered in off the street and accidentally managed to open a book and read a few words.

Why, if he saw a girl’s name on the page he might slam the book closed and run, screaming in terror, never to again open a book.

Sigh.

Come on, people, give boys some credit! They’re tougher than that, and more intelligent.

Unless the real goal is to teach boys, and girls, that the female half of the population isn’t important.

In that case, job well done!