Author: Jonathon

Twenty plus pages yesterday, fifteen today. The book is barreling towards the end. I’m to bed, Anita and I have vampires to kill tomorrow.

I grew up with my grandmother not exactly celebrating, but remembering, my mother’s death. Early August was her annual depression, her anniversary depression. I grew up knowing that it was coming, and being forced to wallow in the pain of it. I don’t like anniversary depressions and I refuse to participate in this one. 9/11 has come again, and we are still here. We are still America. We are still the home of the brave and land of the free. Don’t let anyone take that away from you, from us. Remember who you are. Who we are as a people. Don’t let the terrorist take away who we are, and don’t let other American’s take away who we are. The terrorist do it with fear, and the American politicians do it with fear, too. Remember what Thomas Jefferson said, “The man who would choose security over freedom deserves neither.”

Twenty-seven pages today. Wow. I’ve actually made an outline for the rest of the book. We topped five hundred pages today. We, at the end of a book I usually start saying ‘we’, because I’ve spent the day writing first person narration. I’ve spent the day writing, I and we, and it’s hard to stop. Nearly thirty pages and I am fried. I had this blog planned where I’d talk about the red tail hawks that have taken up residence in our yard, but I’m too tired to do it justice. It’s a parent, we think female, and her baby. The baby is a biiig baby, but he has spent days sitting in trees crying for her to feed him. Like any baby bird he’s been trying to follow her around and beg for food. I’m just used to seeing songbirds do it, not birds of prey. It’s been very cool. I’ll try to do a more complete hawk blog later, maybe Jon will help, since the hawks have become a group activity. If Darla, or one of us hear the hawks outside, work sometimes stops and we go out to see if we can spot them. We saw a female oriole this week, and the hummingbirds are really loving the feeders. The goldfinches have almost decimated the sunflowers in the flower garden. Mockingbirds, Brown Thrashers, Cardinals, are just a few of the birds that are visiting the Choke Cherry. The House Sparrows have come back from where ever they vanished to, and are looking over the purple martin house, which has never held a purple martin. It’s held starlings and sparrows, and at one point wasps, but never what it was intended for. It was up when we bought the house, I knew the martin condo was doomed. It wasn’t close enough to a body of water for one of many problems. I hated the sparrrows when they took over our bird feeders but the sparrows will at least share the feeders with everybody else, the starlings chase everybody off, but themselves. When I saw the cloud of sparrows dash past my windows and land on the martin house, I was actually happy to see them. They hopped around the house talking back and forth, looking for all the world like a family that left the summer cottage and came back to find it trashed by wind, rain, and neglect. Can we fix it up? How much work will it be? Can we get it ready in time? You can complain about sparrows and we do, but they are such unremittingly cheerful birds. There are moments when I actually understand how a homesick Englishman could want to bring them over, so he’d have some sounds of home.

It’s 2:00 in the afternoon and I’ve just gotten to sit down at the computer. It’s just been one of those days. I’ve tried to do several blogs and they have been so depressing that I just couldn’t inflict them on you guys. I am deeply saddened by the death of Steve Irwin. I know that some of my emotion is because I’ve had my own losses. I more than sympathize with little Bindi and even littler Bob, at the loss of their father. I lost my mother at six, so I know some of what’s going on for them. I have no words to express how terrible I feel for Terri to be without Steve. This idea of soulmates causes more problems than it fixes, but I, like much of the world, truly felt that these two people were soulmates. That they are separated at such an early age breaks my heart. My heart goes out to his family, and friends, the people that truly knew him. I am a stranger, just one of his many fans that watched a truly loving man doing what he was meant to do. I’ll try to write about something else next time, but this is what has come to me every time I’ve sat down for the last few days. Look at this way, imagine how depressing the two blogs I didn’t post were compared to this one. Scary, isn’t it. Good-bye Steve, Goddess Bless.

So this morning, I woke up humming the ’93 song “Informer” by the Canadian Rapper Snow.
so I did a google search for it and found a interesting cover of the song.
So now I’m looking for any way to get a CD of “Chori Chori” by Arash featuring Aneela or Aneela featuring Arash.
And yes, I’m beginning to like Wikipedia.

Many of you know that I read a lot of Webcomics on a daily basis. I read at least four different titles each morning, usually before my first cup of tea. One of these is David Mogen-Marr’s Irregular Webcomic. Which is how I got the news.

Steve Irwin is dead.

The news hasn’t really sunk in for me. I ‘m positive I’m still in shock, but I needed to pass the word on.

How are we going to tell Trinity? He is (was) one of her heroes.

Our hearts go out to all of Steve’s Family and Friends. And to all those out there that, like us, will miss the cheerful cry of “Crikey!”

We miss you, Steve.

Jon and I planned a long, lazy Sunday morning. Our first kid free Sunday in ages. Yeah, we’d have to let the dogs out and see that they got fed and medicined, but other than that we were going to take it easy. Jon took the dogs out while I worked on tea. When he came back in the morning plans changed. There was an injured mourning dove outside. Jon had kept the dogs away from it, but he wanted my opinion, was it just a feathered baby that the parents had kicked out of the nest and were still feeding, or was it injured. (Many of the baby birds that people see in their yards are still being fed and cared for by their parents. Leave them alone and watch, and you’ll see. If the baby is mostly naked, no feathers, then you’ve got a problem and the birds may need your help. But most of the time nature is pretty resilient.) The dove was by the water garden, and we had put out seed for it, just in case. Unfortunately, the dove was injured. It was like a small replica of it’s parents, but when it flapped it’s wings to try to fly, it got no lift, and when it folded it’s wings one wing trailed and seemed stiff going back into place. We called the Wild Bird Rehabilitation Center, and asked their opinion. They thought it had broken one of the bones in it’s wing. Easily fixed, and the bird would be ready to release in two to three weeks, if we’d bring it in. If? Jon and I caught the dove and transported it in a brown paper bag (the Wild Bird Center suggestion) and away we went. While we filled in the paperwork, we got a glimpse into the bird nursery. Baby cardinals, baby barn swallows, and some that I wasn’t certain of. It was very cool. The nice lady thanked us for bringing the dove in. Jon said, “It’s what you’re supposed to do.” Apparently, there are people who call in about injured birds, but when they find out that the bird center does not pick up the bird, but that they must bring the bird to them, they refuse. They leave it to die. Evil bastards. Is that too harsh?
Let me say that I understand not wanting to put out the effort. I admit that my first thought after realizing the bird was indeed injured was not, oh, yeah, I have the opportunity to help out one of my fellow creatures. Nope, my first thought was damn. No time for that leisurely cup of tea. No relaxed breakfast. I saw all my plans go up and smoke and I resented it. But . . . we did it anyway. The bird filled my hands, and was so soft. The bird center warned me that the bird might struggle in the bag, but it didn’t. It was very calm. I could feel the weight of it on one side of the bag on the drive over. I admitted outloud in the car how I’d felt about the trip, and Jon said, him too. He’d seen the bird and thought, damn I have to tell Laurell. When all was said and done, we were glad we did it. We were glad we overcame that first grumpy impulse and helped the helpless. The wing is very fixable now, but if left it would have healed wrong and the bird, if a predator didn’t get it, would be flightless for all it’s life. Let’s face it once winter set in a flightless dove wouldn’t survive long. I doubt seriously whether it would have made the first snowfall. Now in less than a month it will be flying and doing the things doves do. We gave it that chance to be the best dove it can be. We’re supposed to help each other, that’s the way the system works. It’s only when we forget that kindness is the rule, not the exception, that everything goes wrong. We lost our leisurely morning, but one little bird got it’s life back. Not a bad way to spend a Sunday morning.

I am at sea with the next step in the book. I was hoping that if I slept on it, I’d wake up and see my way clear, which does happen. But not this time. This time I woke up still puzzled. There are two ways to get past something like this: one, you bull your way through like a tactical team knocking down a door; two, you walk away from the desk, the book, all of it for a few hours or even a day. You let the book sort of cook on the back burner like simmering soup. Anyone who has made homemade soup knows that it’s not soup until it’s fully cooked, sometimes the subconscious needs simmer time, too. I’d forgotten the second method. I’d been under the deadline gun for so long that I’d been like a bull in the china shop, and forgotten that sometimes that method just doesn’t work. Sometimes all you get is frustration and broken dishes. Today I remembered that sometimes you need to walk away and let your mind rest. Even if you don’t come up with a brilliant solution, your mind is better rested when you go back to tackle the book. I mean if the gentle solution doesn’t work, you can always revert to something more forceful later. I let myself walk away for a little bit. Went to the wild bird store and the metaphysical shop. Came back feeling better, a little more relaxed. Jon asked me, “Did you enjoy yourself.” My reply, “Finally, yes.” He said, “Finally?” I nodded. He hugged me and said he loved me. If you don’t understand why he said he loved me at that moment than I’m not sure I can explain it. Jon and I love each other sometimes because of our faults, or we at least find them charming. We did lunch, went to the bookstore. And somewhere I just let it go, and relaxed into the concept that I would not work today. A hard concept for me, but I finally managed it. I invited my daughter to go on the last errand of the day but she was with a friend, and school will soon part them for the year, so she opted out. That was okay. I hadn’t been by myself anywhere for almost anything except work, and not for anything else that was supposed to be fun for months. Alone was okay today. In fact it was nice. I went to the coffee and tea shop and picked things out instead of sending someone with a list. I got teas and coffees that were new to try, as well as what I would have listed. It was nice. They asked after Richard, who used to be the one who went to the shop for me. Maybe I’ve farmed out too many things that I enjoyed to others. Maybe. Anyway, I feel refreshed, and have hopes that tomorrow I’ll either see my way clear, or be ready to play bull with this particular brick wall. Either way, the day off makes me feel better able to do it.

Busy day. Jimmy, our sixteen-year-old dog, had to be put under so he could have four teeth taken out. Always nerve racking when an older dog goes in for any kind of surgery procedure. But he’s fine. A little disoriented, a little wobbly, but doing okay. I’m trying very hard to be the dog in this situation. By that I mean not thinking about next time, or that he’s the oldest dog I’ve ever owned. Humans worry too much. Dogs don’t. The other three dogs were just happy to see him back and sniffed him all over to find out what his adventures had been. I’m going to be in the moment and be happy he’s home, and enjoy his bemused presence on the couch. By tomorrow he’ll be back to his cheerfully cranky self.
Have the remains of the plot up on the wall. I know what has to happen now, but not the precise order. Everything but the last little bit is clear, sort of. Choices remain for the characters to make, and that will effect which sticky notes stay and which get trashed. I’m going to go over and pet Jimmy one more time before bedtime.

I’ll try to make this quick. It’s been a very distracting morning and I’ve just gotten to sit down to work. But I realized that I’m using one of my tricks for keeping the plot and things going in a book. I have a chapter that got moved to later in this book, and because of events that preceded it the chapter has to change substantially, but not completely. I’ve had a couple of scenes that had to be edited and changed, but were still necessary. What I’ve been doing was to make notes on sticky notes and put them up near the computer so they are like the first thing I see when I sit down. I don’t have to stare at the computer screen and all those words and wonder how do I fix this? Yesterday at the end of the work day I knew how to fix it, so I left myself a note about what seemed so clear at the end of yesterday. Smart me. A few days back I actually made a numbered outline on a large sticky note, so I could follow my literary bread crumbs through the forest of edits. I know, I’m breaking that never edit until it’s a first draft rule, but I know I will finish this book. I know that somehow I’ll muddle through to the end. I won’t loose courage or strength before the end. And the rewrite of the scene where we have a death, well, that changed the interaction with the police that had already been partially written. So one change has dictated others. But if I had to, I could finish the book and simply know that I’d need the dialogue changed in this chapter. But I know how to fix it, fix it today, and be back to the action tomorrow. But often when I am having to edit as I go I do lists of changes at the end of the day so that in the morning what seemed so clear hasn’t vanished into the haze. Trust me, plotting is like getting ideas, if you don’t write it down, sometimes it goes away.