Dogs, Deer, and Children

Sonia Dog's stroll yesterday evening was fraught with challenges.  Her hackles went up and she started growling as soon as she got out the door--the riding mower, which she's always distrusted, was parked in the yard.  Then, at the top of the south driveway, she fixated on the deer strolling around in the yard across the street.  Fio issued a number of LEAVE IT commands and circled Doggie back and forth a couple of times, trying to accustom her to the deer, but, at the same time, making sure she didn't break leash and bolt across the street after them.

Rather than risk too close a brush with the deer by walking Sonia up the road to the mouth of our north driveway, as is the usual pattern, Fiorella took Doggier back down the driveway to the house and up the north driveway.  The yappy dogs were out, but Sonia ignored them, as she has been taught.  However, at the top of the drive, she had another, although more distant view of the deer, so Fiorella circled her again.  Back down the drive, the yappy dogs were accompanied by a whistle, which raised Sonia's hackles again and required another round of LEAVE IT commands. Then came the corker--a child's voice.  But Sonia still held steady.

Fiorella was exhausted but elated.  Sonia's three special incitements--yappy dogs, deer, and children presented, with no incident. We're making progress.

PS: Gotta brag,  This morning Doggie dealt with a pedestrian, the neighbors across the street walking visitors to their car, and, as we were about to walk up onto the porch, a deer.  Better and better,  Now if Fiorella could just rent a few children.

Too Busy

Stop the world!  Fiorella doesn't want to get off, but she does want a week or two to catch up.  Yes, she's overloaded again.  Now that the weather is cooler, she wants to work on the yard.  But she's also committed to sending her editor a sketch of a cover for Kinkaid House. And she needs to finish Lolly's story and start on a story bridging Laurel's story and Lolly's story, and write Sarah's story.  And she needs to get the painting up that Husband brought home from the office, but there's no room on the walls because Fio has the house plastered with art.

Fio also needs to do the physical therapy exercises that she's been shirking, and her vocal exercises, which she keeps putting off.  And she needs to find the three pairs of glasses she's lost, one of them brand new.  And she needs to clean up her desk and go through the mountains of scraps of paper on which she's written down various brilliant ideas. And she needs to run up a sample of the little purse she'd like to sell on-line. And she needs to find the deed the lawyer wants to see in regard to the family business venture.

And redo the bulletin board, which is now in layers.  And call her ophthalmologist for her yearly check-up and the veterinarian for Sonia Dog's semi-annual check-up.  And buy a new battery for her overused computer.  And check IKEA for some decent kitchen chairs.  And drop by WalMart to buy Shredded Wheat because HEB doesn't carry Post anymore.  And consult Click Computers to find out if she actually has Mozy or not and how to get rid of Barracuda, an over-zealous spam filter that took over her email unasked.

Then there are the everyday things, like keeping up with Sonia's training, practicing piano, lifting weights (just five-pounders), and picking up the house.

And to think, her parents kept advising her to stop and smell the roses.  

Too Busy

Stop the world!  Fiorella doesn't want to get off, but she does want a week or two to catch up.  Yes, she's overloaded again.  Now that the weather is cooler, she wants to work on the yard.  But she's also committed to sending her editor a sketch of a cover for Kinkaid House. And she needs to finish Lolly's story and start on a story bridging Laurel's story and Lolly's story, and write Sarah's story.  And she needs to get the painting up that Husband brought home from the office, but there's no room on the walls because Fio has the house plastered with art.

Fio also needs to do the physical therapy exercises that she's been shirking, and her vocal exercises, which she keeps putting off.  And she needs to find the three pairs of glasses she's lost, one of them brand new.  And she needs to clean up her desk and go through the mountains of scraps of paper on which she's written down various brilliant ideas. And she needs to run up a sample of the little purse she'd like to sell on-line. And she needs to find the deed the lawyer wants to see in regard to the family business venture.

And redo the bulletin board, which is now in layers.  And call her ophthalmologist for her yearly check-up and the veterinarian for Sonia Dog's semi-annual check-up.  And buy a new battery for her overused computer.  And check IKEA for some decent kitchen chairs.  And drop by WalMart to buy Shredded Wheat because HEB doesn't carry Post anymore.  And consult Click Computers to find out if she actually has Mozy or not and how to get rid of Barracuda, an over-zealous spam filter that took over her email unasked.

Then there are the everyday things, like keeping up with Sonia's training, practicing piano, lifting weights (just five-pounders), and picking up the house.

And to think, her parents kept advising her to stop and smell the roses.  

Здравствуйте, Друзья!

Fiorella is bemused by the fact that so much of her audience is in the old USSR.  Do her readers sense her Slavic bloodlines? Or are they themselves bemused by this weird American woman who writes about driveway rocks, her overgrown dog, her would-be writing career, her own psyche, and anything else that comes down the pike?  Maybe they're just practicing their English, getting all the idioms down.  Or maybe they're analyzing crazy Fio for a psychology class.

Whatever. Говорите со мной. Я могу прочитать русский язык.

Worthiness

Fiorella, as you know by now, is a wienie.  She apologizes to table legs and chair arms when she runs into them.  And she feels guilty about tossing rocks back into the driveway that aren't pretty enough to take back to the house and store in her stack of plastic boxes on the back porch.  Then she worries that the rejects will feel . . . rejected.

And shouldn't common rocks be just as valued as sparkly ones?

A la Noam Chomsky

T(M)(have-en)(be-ing)V is the most powerful formula Fiorella has ever encountered.  It's linguistic talk for the construction of the basic English verb form.  "T" stands for "tense," either present and past.  "M" stands for "modal," of which there are five: may, can, will, shall, and must.  "V" stands for the individual verb form, like "eat" or "love" or "sing."

The formula is very easy to apply, and Fiorella taught it to all her composition classes.  First, choose a tense.  Past tense is represented by "-ed" and present by a "-0."  Then decide if you want to use a modal and, if so, which one.  Next, decide whether or not you want to use "have-en."  Same for "be-ing"--the constructions in parentheses are optional but must stay in the same order.  The final step is to select a verb.

Let's try "eat."

Using past tense and a modal--how about "can"--and all the bells and whistles, we get [-ed+can+have-en+be-ing+eat].  Now we leap-frog [-ed,] [-en,] and [-ing] to get [can-ed+have be-en+eat-ing]. The past tense of  "can" is "could," so we end up with the string [could have been eating].  Switch out past tense for present tense and we get [0-can+have-en be-ing eat; can have been eating].  Leave out the model and we get [have been eating] or [had been eating], depending on your choice of tense.  Leave out the [have-en] and you get [can be eating] or [could be eating].  Leave out the [be-ing] and you end up with [can have eaten] or [could have eaten].  Leave out the model and the [have-en] and you get [be eating] or [was eating.]  Leave out the model and the [have-en] and the [be-ing] and you get [eat] or [ate].  Duck soup.

Try your hand with "love" and "sing," remembering that [sing-ed] becomes [sang], [sing-en] becomes [sung], and" [love-en] becomes [loved].

This simple all-encompassing formula is the reason Fiorella majored in linguistics.








Also write about my method of defining use of apostrophe for possessive.

Early Music Project

At the invitation of Brother and his wife, Fio and Husband attended a performance sponsored by the Texas Early Music Project last Sunday.  No, it's not early Texas music--rattles and tom-toms--but early music of the Medieval, Renaissance, Baroque and Early Classical periods sung by young, upcoming vocalists and accompanied by a small orchestra of period instruments.  Fio was entranced, especially by the little coloratura, Gitanjali Mathur, whose voice was liquid as water.

There are five more programs this year.  Fiorella recommends them. 

Love the Weather

Two weeks ago, Fiorella was lowering the window blinds every day to keep the sun out.  Now she's raising them every day to invite the sun in.  And each morning when she goes walking with Sonia Dog, she eyes the landscaping in the north planting bed and plots fresh schemes to tame it.  And she's checked with Husband about chainsawing the dead trees for firewood.  And she's planning to remove the wire cages around the wax myrtle bushes.

Yeah, after a long summer isolated inside the air-conditioned house, Fio is ready to tackle the great outdoors again.  

Insomnia

Fiorella is not at the top of her game.  Despite taking a soothing bath last night, then lying in bed forever and ever, then taking another soothing bath, then wandering downstairs to work on PRINCESS REDLANDER and watch non-prime-time TV, then going upstairs and picking up the workroom, the bathroom, and some of her study, then returning downstairs with a bed pillow and trying to sleep on the couch, Fiorella did not get any sleep last night.

It happens now and then and scares the hell out of Fio each time.  People can die from lack of sleep, and Fio has so many more stories she wants to write.

Written on Friday

Our windows and glass doors are all steamed up.  Yeah, it's cooler outside than in.  Autumn is coming on fast.

The rain drummed hard on our metal roof last night so our driveway was running water when Husband went out to get the paper.  Later, when Fio took Sonia Dog for her walk, the precipitation had diminished to a gentle, British variety, but now it's cats and dogs again.

So much for the predictions of a ten-year drought.  Fio thought by now, like the Anasazi when their time came, she'd be packing up her bags and moving to a wetter clime.  Instead, because of the illogical weather patterns of global warming, she can stay put--at least for now.

Onion

Let's make one thing clear. Fiorella doesn't write in one steady flow.  Instead, she jots down ideas and dialogue, tries to put everything in a logical order, then rewrites and rewrites and rewrites, paying special attention to notes written in caps to BE SURE THE BASEBALL IS MENTIONED EARLIER or whatever.  Her manuscripts grow layer by layer, like an onion.  Kinkaid House, complete at 90,000 words when Fio originally submitted it to the Divine Liza, had been fleshed out to 95,000 words by the time it reached the desk of editor Michele.  If Fio has further access, it probably will reach 100,000.

And, by the way, when the book comes out, Fio expects all you readers out there in Eastern Europe to gobble it up and send her to the top of the New York Times best seller list.

Medical Alert

Hooray for modern medicine!  Fiorella is astounded to realize that it hasn't been a year since her hip replacement, but she's totally recovered and dashes around without even a limp--or the pain she had grown so accustomed to that she didn't realize how bad it was till it was gone.  And she's still happy about the facelift too.  In fact, she's thrilled to get up every morning and look in the mirror. And she's pleased with the results of all the other surgeries she's had through the years--carpal tunnel, gall bladder, two back surgeries, the eye stuff, the aortic valve replacement, the pacemaker, the partial thyroidectomy.

But she had the best results from the C-sections.   

Concern

There's only so much food in the world, only so much land, only so much wealth, so are other people living worse because we're living better, because the food, the land, the wealth, is very unevenly distributed?  Does Fiorella's good fortune in living in a nice house in a nice area, driving a darling little car, and having a pantry packed with food mean that someone else is going without?

Of course, it does, but it's up to Fio to find her own private remedy.  And it needs to be more than donating old clothes to The Caring Place. 

Always Wondering, Always Pondering

Fiorella's abiding trait is curiosity.  She wants to know about people, about languages, about how the world works, about everything.  That's why she's constantly analyzing relationships.  That's why she's learning Mandarin from her dentist and a helpful RWA chapter mate.  That's why she reads science news and keeps up with current events.  That's why her eyes and ears are always open and receiving.

And she spouts it all out in her romance novels. 

Apres Shampoo

My hair grows lank and limp
My hair grows quick and thick
I fix it with a blast of spray
And pray that it will stay that way



 

One of Those Days . . . .

Spent two hours in dog training yesterday, fell asleep after lunch and woke up with a pounding headache which I took grocery shopping with me, skipped supper to work till eleven on a family business venture, then wondered why I hadn't gotten any writing done on my novel--although I did jot down a few good notes.  Hope to work them into the manuscript today because my editor is calling at 10:00--but right now I've got to pick up the house before the maid comes.

Extracurricular

GRADE   ACTIVITY
Second.....Brownies, twirling
Third........Bluebirds, Baylor Children's Theater
Fourth......Camp Fire Girls, Baylor Children's Theater
Fifth.........Camp Fire Girls, Baylor Children's Theater, piano, oil painting
Sixth........Camp Fire Girls, piano, oil painting, ballet
Seventh....piano, oil painting
Eighth......oil painting
Ninth........oil painting
Tenth........oil painting

SUMMERS: swimming lessons at the Y in elementary school
                      tennis at Lions' Park in junior high

And that's what little girls are made of--at least that's what formed Fiorella.

Speech, Vision, Hearing

Sonya Dog has shown no interest in learning how to speak English, but she does understand a few words of it.  She usually obeys "sit," "stay," "down," "come," and "leave it," but translates "no" as meaning "please leap up beside me on the couch and make yourself comfortable."
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Some dogs may be color-blind, but Sonia recognizes blue.  She knows that anyone at PetsMart wearing a blue shirt will give her treat, and she's wary of the blue tarp that Husband covers the riding mower with.  The black tarp was okay, but that blue one is highly suspicious.
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Sonia can hear the rip of Velcro from three rooms and a floor away when Mommy is putting on her outdoor shoes to go for a walk, but she doesn't even twitch an eyelid when Daddy's alarm clock rings.  

After Great Pain

Fiorella loved teaching this poem by Emily Dickinson because it is so true.  We have all been touched by the fires of hell at least once in our lives.

After great pain a formal feeling comes--
The nerves sit ceremonious like tombs;
The stiff Heart questions--was it He that bore?
And yesterday--or centuries before?

The feet, mechanical, go round
A wooden way
Of ground, or air, or ought,
Regardless grown,
A quartz contentment, like a stone.

This is the hour of lead
Remembered if outlived,
As freezing persons recollect the snow--
First chill, then stupor, then the letting go.

Dreamland

What if, when Fiorella tripped over that sneaky hotel step in Atlanta and hit her head on the concrete curb, she went into a coma and is even now in a hospital being kept alive by tubes and tender care?  It would mean that everything that's happened to her since the national RWA conference is a morphine dream,  that she didn't really meet and connect with her agent in person, that she didn't really have editors from three big publishing houses want Kinkaid House, that she didn't really receive an offer from Grand Central, that Michele Biedelspach won't be her editor.  It would mean that Husband didn't surprise her with a Dove bar after she'd had a hard time working out the rehearsal dinner for Son's wedding, that her hair doesn't look extra good right now, that an old friend hasn't contacted her on Facebook.

What the heck--if Fio is floating off in a fantasy somewhere, reality can go fly a kite.

The Yard

Fio has always thought that, given enough time, and she could do anything, a confidence that must be in the DNA because Aunt Julie once said the same thing about herself.  More to the current point, if Fio stares at a problem in the house or the yard long enough, she can eventually remedy the situation.  Thus in her former home, she spent a great deal of time sitting on the floor of the unfurnished living room until she figured out what to do with it.  And in her current home, she is staring at the yard.

The expensive landscaping didn't work.  Most of the plants died and the armadillos are running riot over the grub-rich imported dirt.  They're even tearing up the weed barrier Fio hired McHandyman to put down.  The future is obvious.  Fio's going to check out the prices on flagstones and experiment with putting them down without mortar in one of the planting beds.

Oh, Mr.  McHandyman . . . .

Uno, zwei, tri, muuDu, quinque, cinq, sei

Hello, one and all, and especially you physical therapists that told Fiorella not to blog about you. What a challenge to hurl at her.

No, this isn't a scandalous tell-all.  Fiorella liked the therapists who worked with her, and she benefited from the treatments--in fact, now that her sessions are over, she's actually doing some of the exercises at home. But Fio does have one suggestion. It would make better use of your clients' time if you turned off the television and suggested they learn to count their reps in various foreign languages. Fiorella herself reviewed Spanish, German, Russian, Telugu, Latin, and French (sort of--not too good at pronouncing French) during her time on the table.  And the PT big dog, Nicole, kindly added Italian to her repertoire.

If those seven languages aren't enough, there's always Mandarin. Fio's already learned 1,2, 3--ee (high), aar (low and rising up), ssun(high to low), although she needs to read up on Mandarin phonemes before she can give you the exact pronunciation of that last one.

A Well-ordered LIfe

Mr. Lattimore taught Fiorella precision and order.  Looking back, Fio thinks he was probably diagnosibly obsessive, but, since he taught math at a junior high school, it worked for him--and for Fiorella.  She has no trouble balancing a checkbook or adding up business expenses because she writes the numbers down clearly and keeps the columns straight and distinct.  And she tries to live her life that way too--precise and in the right order.

John Lattimore was a little man, maybe about five-three, so small he had to buy his clothes from the boys' department, but he commanded tremendous respect from the students, mainly because he was so strict and--well--precise and well-ordered.

My Bad

Sorry about the screwy post that showed up accompanying Fio's reflection on the nature of God yesterday.  Fiorella writes observations and notes to herself, then stores everything by assigning them future dates of publication.  Sometimes she uses the stuff, sometimes she doesn't, but nothing is never meant to be seen unedited.  Unfortunately, Fio also sometimes lets the date slip unnoticed and her meanderings leak out onto the current page.

She apologizes.  Mea culpa.

God

Fio is fascinated by the ways we have remade God in our own image through the centuries.  At one point, he was seen as a powerful king, then, in the New World, as an angry father.  Now we see God as more beneficent.  It's all a matter of humanizing God--trying to understand what cannot be understood.

And that's the sort of thing Fiorella thinks about.

Show Me the Money

Fiorella is tired of hearing that writing is fun but doesn't pay.  Au contraire, Fio knows people who make a lot of money at it.  The secret is that they write catchy stories and have figured out how to market themselves--the commodity won't sell unless it's interesting all the way through, and nobody will know about it unless someone spreads the word.

At least that's how it is in romance writing.

Thee first step to fame and fortune process is writing better, better, best.  Classes abound, but some are more helpful than others.  Fio recommends April Kihlstrom's Book-in-a-Week, which is not only on-line, but on Kindle and Nook.  You are not limited to one hard-scrabble week, and there's no pressure-drive for you to actually write a complete novel in one week.  Not only is Kihlstrom supportive, but she has a track record of thirty-some romances put out by top-flight publishers.  But if you're not the joiner type, you can do a pretty good job all by your lonesome by studying the techniques used by your favorite authors.  (Spoiler alert: you will never read a novel the same was again.  Is a writing career worth it to you?)

Fiorella can't give you much advice about the marketing side of the equation.  That's why she accepted the offer from Grand Central rather than publish independently.   But one thing she knows for sure--your best advertising is word of mouth, and the best way to get the good word out there is to write a crackerjack story.

It's a closed circle, but there very well may be a pot of gold somewhere along the way.

Cringe-worthy

The dumbest thing Fiorella ever did was satisfy her vulgar curiosity about the inside of the neighbors' house, gaining entry by using the key they had given her in case of emergency.  She thought the family was away on vacation so what harm could come of it?  Except that they weren't on the open highway heading toward a fun time for all--they were out getting groceries, and they came home while Fiorella was in the back bedroom.  There was only one thing Fiorella could do: waltz out into the hall, meet them with a big smile on her face, and say, "Oh, I thought you were on vacation and I was making sure everything was okay," hand them back the key, and walk out the front door.

Writing about this mortifying memory is  Fio's attempt at exorcism, but, sad to say, she didn't learn her lesson--she's still unremittingly curious.  Yes, she'll check out the medicine cabinet if she uses your bathroom. 

A Bit at a Time

Fio's cleaning up the second-floor guest bathroom a bit at a time.  It's a system she uses to accomplish whatever chores she'd rather forget about.  It's also the reason she has so many half-finished projects, big and small, around the house, like sprucing up the downstairs guest room and moving the eight-pack of Ozarka to the upstairs refrigerator.  It's a crazy system, but it works for Fio.  The second-floor bathroom is almost habitable now, the downstairs guest room is sporting a new mirror and bedside desk (the desk that took Fio and Husband a week of half-hours to construct), and the Ozarka has reached the landing, all without causing undue physical or emotional strain to Fiorella. 

Life is good.

At It Again

Fio stupidly told her agent she'd send her the first nine chapters of Lolly's story by the end of the week--last week, that is--but, needless to say, she didn't make her own deadline.  Not that she hasn't written said chapters, but she's not satisfied with them.  They're rough, very rough, and she's afraid they'd horrify Liza. 

This is a typical Fiorella behavior.  Perfectionist to the core, she'll revise till the cows come home, which will be forever because Rancho Fiorella doesn't run any bovines.  (And to show you just how crazy Fio is, she revised that last sentence nine times before she was satisfied with it.)

Lone Wolf

Fiorella has always had friends, but she's never been a member of--well--a clique.  The word has negative connotations of snootiness and privilege, but they got your back, Jack.

In her school days, Fio strove to merge, but never quite accomplished it.  In college, she missed out on the sorority sisterhood.  As young marrieds, she and Husband were too poor to run with a crowd, and, as a mother, Fiorella didn't catch onto the "play-date" scene.  Even now, as a five-year member of RWA, Fio has some friends, but is not affiliated with any group. 

Fiorella walks alone.  But, then, she's used to it. 





 

Re: Animals

About those big inflatable swans which the Wall Street Journal reports are so popular in the up-scale swimming pools of New York's Hamptons--Fio wishes more power to them.  They're a touch of whimsy in an otherwise crass environment.
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Happy to report that Sonia Dog totally ignored the yappy next-door-neighbor dogs on our walk yesterday evening.  On the other hand, yesterday morning she went bonkers when we encountered a slow-moving golf cart with a prancing dog attached to each side of it.
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Fiorella's first pet was a goldfish whose major--and final--trick was floating upside down.