From Gardening to Wordage

Give Fiorella a break! She's the only person in the world whose asian jasmines are dying on the stem. Not only that, but, the resident deer consider her iron plants to be quite tasty. Fio isn't sure what to do with the withering jasmine, but she's building a network of metal staves and rounds held together with silver twisties to protect the iron plants--as if that will work.
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Your girl had to contact elder son when her screen suddenly lost its upper and lower information strips, meaning that Fio couldn't back anything up. Son didn't understand the situation at first and put her through several exercises before finally solving the problem. It's hard to work on computers from a distance. Wish someone would come out with a nice, simple machine that doesn't require Fio making so many SOS calls to Minnesota,
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Guess what! There are still debutantes in the world! Fiorella researched the world of debut four years ago, when she started writing Lolly's story, then rechecked the phenomenon just today to be sure it still exists. Ah, the fairy-tale lives of the upper crust. Wonder if their divorces are just as glamorous.
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Yes, the packing is still going on, although Fio is running out of small boxes to stuff inside the big ones, which probably calls for another trip to the Post Office to see what it has in stock. Hey, are any of you out there old enough to remember when we would get our boxes from the hoard that the grocery stores tossed out as trash?
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How is Lolly going, you ask. Well, excepting for total panic when Fiorella lost the lines at the top and bottom of her computer screen, the story is moving along just as Fio planned. Looks like the book will end up at 70,000 words or so.

Writing, Writing, Writing, Writing, Writing

This blog almost didn't get written because Sunday is Fiorella's hair-wash and clean-up day. Also, she has a lot on her hands right now. Today was dedicated to clearing out more drawers in her office, a Zoom get-together, and Lolly. Yes, at last, Fio is working on the book she started four years ago, when she was told that it was ahead of its time. Now she's on the last three chapters--about sixty pages to go.
     Fio's has told you quite a bit about Lolly so far--that she's petite, blonde, sexy, and willful, but nothing about Cotton, the male lead. Actually, he's the very man Lolly shouldn't be attracted to--a serious paleontologist several years older than she is. But fate has a way of bringing like and unlike together. Especially when a baby is involved.
      Fiorella wants to get this book finished and published as soon as she can because she's already blocked out Sarah's story, which will probably be a novella (40,000 words).
     And what will come after that, you ask. Well, Fio has at least three more completed books that she needs to spiff up before they are published, and there are many more stories rolling around in her head. Then there are the short stories that crowd two of her file drawers. And did she mention the poetry?
     Before she leaves, Fiorella will give you a little peak at her heroine:
With her hair tumbling over her shoulders like a shower of gold, so soft and smelling of springtime, she'd never looked more enticing, but he'd settled her down on his couch, not his bed...hadn't he?
    
    
    
    


     
    

From Clever to Not So Clever

Heh, heh....clever Fiorella has used Scotch tape to hold the cord of her Mac into the socket of the machine so Carbonate can back her up. From what she understands, she has to do that for two days, with the screen open, to be sure none of her golden words are lost.
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Lolly is coming along now. Fio girded her loins, went through all her old copies of chapters eleven and twelve, and found enough of the pages that Sonia Dog had sat on that she--Fiorella, not Sonia-- could put them in place again, but it will take a while.
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Good grief--your girl had been saving all kinds of boxes, but she's run out of all but the shoes boxes now, and she needs larger boxes to pack things like her Russian/Rusyn stuff.
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It's sweet the way Sonia Dog always rushes to Fio's side if she hears so much as a whimper from her mommy--which she often does, but sometimes it gets overwhelming--like when Fiorella discovered several of her pages were lost so Doggie dashed to Fio's side, plopped herself down in the middle of another mound of papers, and started pawing and licking her.
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Well, it turns out that Fiorella wasn't that clever after all. Fio kept absent-mindedly closing the lid, and not even Scotch tape could prevent the cord of the Mac from disengaging from the machine.

Too Much at Once

Between the roaring of the fans drying off the ceiling to the crash of her computer to realizing she hadn't bought enough bags of sand for the walkway, Fio's life has not been too great lately, and, on top of all that, she's soothed herself with far too many frozen Chocolate Nuggets. But at least the kitchen ceiling isn't dripping anymore, her computer has been restored (after a l-o-o-o-n-g episode with Apple Care), and her wonderful yard man, realizing the walkway needed more sand, went out and bought four more bags on his own, which Fio of course, reimbursed him for. So, now that everything is semi-right with the world, what's next?
     Maybe Fiorella can finally go upstairs to her office and continue with the organizing she was in the middle of when Husband died. Maybe she can finally work on Lolly's story. Maybe she can get information on Chromebook, which she's been told doesn't worship passwords like Mac does. Maybe she can dig into that list of things she needs to do that she wrote about a couple of days ago. Maybe she can cuddle up on the couch and catch some shut eye. We'll see.
 
     She'll admit it--the couch won.

From Cheerios to County Commissioners

Welcome to Fiorella's world! She took forever to fall asleep, then had bad dreams and didn't wake up till nine the next morning. And as she was preparing her breakfast, the bottom of her Cheerios box gave way, dropping the newly-opened protective bag onto the concrete floor and causing about half of the little ringlets to leap into the air like a geyser, then land on said concrete floor.
     And Sonia Dog wouldn't even clean them up for Mommy.
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As if hosting big, loud fans in the kitchen for the next two weeks isn't enough, Sonya Dog's feeding station has had to be moved because she'd afraid of their noise. Also, FaceBook has changed its face and Fio's having trouble getting around. Also, Fiorella's house is in shambles because she's trying to pack everything up, and she doesn't have enough of the right-sized boxes.
     Nothing to do but rip open another bag of Hershey's Chocolate Nuggets.
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Fio is still pulling things out of drawers and closets, and Bastrop Son left a couple of loads of stuff to be packed away, but what can she do with the all those boxes she lugs to the garage? The space is filling up fast, especially since almost a third of it is occupied by garden equipment, car stuff, and other kinds of guy things.
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AHA! Fiorella has "classic" FB back again. All it took was shrieking like a banshee all over the internet until friend Mary Beth Gradziel took pity on her and gave her step by step instructions.
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Your girl is bearding the lions in their den again. Yep, she gutted up her and called the County Commissioners, Precinct 3, and asked them to remove the dam across her dry creek that they'd said they would come back and do this year. Fiorella's not expecting a reply.Time for another letter to the editor?

From Potatoes to Canine Medical Practice

One potato, two potatoes, three potatoes more--
Where's the dang computer if it's not on the floor?
Maybe under Doggie, maybe on the bed
Maybe in another room, dead, dead, dead
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Fiorella heard the Hindi in the voice of the young man helping her at the gas station, but refrained from saying. Namaste, jee. Ap kah say heh. It's amazing how language memory can be triggered. Maybe Fio's languages are not lost after all. 😀
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Now that the ceiling is drying, Fio has finally won her battle to have her pacemaker tested, and Biden is leading in the polls, she must rip into her upstairs office, which is a total mess because she had just begun tearing it apart the month before Husband died. Pray for her.
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Interesting. The more layers your girl uncovers in her preparation for moving, the more items she finds that she'd thought she'd lost forever. Hello, red scissors. Where have you been all this time?
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Fiorella finally had to put a bandaid over a small scab on her arm because Sonia Dog kept licking it in a canine attempt to make Mommy well again. 🧡🧡🧡

SOUTH PACIFIC

Skimming through FaceBook this morning, Fiorella noticed a post of a mean-looking woman in a car yelling at a stringed-instrument group marching down the street, minding its own business, but mourning the loss of a violinist. In the back seat were two young children, a boy and a girl, who, following the lead of their mother, were distorting their faces and yelling just like she was.

Fio was shocked, and immediately, Bali Ha'i floated into her mind, but it took a few minutes for her to figure out why. Then she realized that, under the covers, the Rodgers and Hammerstein play/movie SOUTH PACIFIC was all about racism. The hero has two mixed-race children that the heroine first rejects, then grows to love, but they live on Bali Ha'i, an enchanted pacific island, while the second lead knows he cannot take the native girl he's fallen in love with home because he has to return to the US, where she would not be accepted. He explains how racism works in a heart-breaking solo that makes Fio cry with every verse she types:

     You've got to be taught and fear
     You've got to be taught from year to year
     It's got to be drummed in your dear little ear
     You've got to be carefully taught

     You've got to be taught to be afraid
     Of people whose eyes are oddly made
     And people whose skin is a different shade
     You've got to be carefully taught

     You've got to be taught before it's too late
     Before you are six or seven or eight
     To hate all the people your relatives hate
     You've got to be carefully taught

How about reviving the SOUTH PACIFIC again? It's time.