Research mishaps: Looking up recovery times for anesthetized cats, one of Google’s suggestions was, “Is it dangerous to sedate a cat?”
I read, “Is it dangerous to seduce a cat?”
Answer: depends on its mood. đ€Ł
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As with Stream of Consciousness Saturday (SoCS), if you see a pingback from someone else in my comment section, click and have a read. Itâs bound to be short and sweet.
Unlike SoCS, this is not a prompt so thereâs no need to stick to the same âtheme.â
The rules that Iâve made for myself (but donât always follow) for âOne-Liner Wednesdayâ are:
1. Make it one sentence.
2. Try to make it either funny or inspirational.
3. Use our unique tag #1linerWeds.
4. Add our lovely badge to your post for extra exposure!
What ever happened to those hardback digest versions of books, compiled by Reader’s Digest? You know, the ones with the dark brown covers. My mother had a bunch of them when I was little. I remember trying to read a story out of one of them when I was a kid … maybe 10 years old? I think it was Moby Dick or Treasure Island or one of the old classics. I got bored with it. And I also recall wondering if I was going to read the story, why not actually read the story rather than a glorified synopsis of one?
Maybe that’s why they stopped making them …?
Or do they still? I haven’t seen one of the Digest books in years, unless they were in a used book store.
Speaking of books (and not to make this a sales post … I don’t want everything on my blog to be a sales post, but lately it seems to be all I do. More on that in a minute …) did you know Amazon has a coupon for $5 off, if you spend more than $20 on two paperbacks, until tomorrow? The coupon code is NOVBOOK18. I would be grateful if you bought one of mine, but it’s good for whatever you choose.
Which now brings me to what I’m loath to digest, and that’s that I can’t keep this up. I’ve spent more time writing and trying to sell my books than I used to, and the evidence is here on my blog. Or, I should say, the evidence is the lack of my presence here. Something has to give, and when it comes down to it, I have to follow the money. I need to spend more time doing things that will earn me money, or I’m not going to have the Internet to be here at all. Or food. I could give up food.
But it’s tough, you know? I feel like y’all are family here. And I don’t want to let you down. Nor do I want to give up the pleasure I get from contributing to this community I’ve built around me.
I won’t give up SoCS as long as I have a computer to host it on. Nor One-Liner Wednesday. But I may need help … no, scratch that … if I’m going to do Just Jot It January 2019, I’m GOING to need help. But I’m not sure how to do that anymore either, since WordPress has changed the guest blogging rules.
Suggestions are welcome.
I do know that I’ll be working a full time job (editing) in January, so my time will be very limited. I may drop the coloring club not because I don’t have time to post, but because I never have time to color. If anyone wants to take that one over, let me know via email at bacamjoly@gmail.com.
So that didn’t end up being a very uplifting post, did it?
Maybe next week …
I hope everyone has finished digesting their Thanksgiving dinner by now. For us in the rest of the world, it’s business as usual.
You might be wondering to yourself, what is it with that woman? She posts prompts and half the time, she can’t even make it on time to her own party. (That woman would, of course, be me.) Not that I think you think of me much. I probably think of me, much more than you think of me, in fact. My commas are all over the place tonight. Oops.
But I think what’s really wrong with me, other than my recent comma disability (it’s late, that’s my excuse), is that I have too many roles. Let’s see …
I’m a mother.
And a father, kinda, because it’s a one-parent household.
I’m an author.
I’m an editor.
I’m a housekeeper.
I’m a picker.
And a grinner.
I’m a lover.
And I’m a sinner.
… wait. Those last four might have been an earworm.
What it comes down to is I’ve got too much to do on the weekends. Silly of me, I suppose, to think I could keep this blogging stuff up indefinitely, what with everything else. The more I take on, the more I fail, it seems. (Ignore the commas.)
So, I try to roll with it all. But it’s a crunchy kind of roll, with far too many bumps along the way to make it even seem like a smooth roll.
It’s more of a rutted roll. Slimy in spots …
Okay, now I want sushi. I tried to get away from it, but the craving is there.
A nice crunchy roll would go down so nice as a midnight snack.
I’m hiding out in the kitchen while Alex is on the computer in the living room. I’m not a mean mom, but he does like to keep me busy doing things when I’d rather be doing other things.
He likes to keep busy. I keep stressing to him that it’s okay to be lazy once in a while (because that’s when I get work of my own done), but I keep being undermined by one of his teachers (don’t know which one, or maybe it’s all of them) who keep telling him being lazy is a bad thing. Problem with Alex is it’s all or nothing. He doesn’t understand nuance and perspective.
Take the Grinch, for instance. Alex is convinced that he’s a mean one, full stop. So we probably won’t be going to that movie. He wants to see “The Nutcracker” today. And he wants to go to the mall, not only to buy birthday presents for his brother, but to spend his own birthday money too.
Meanwhile, Mom’s got a novel to write.
I was caught up on my NaNoWriMo word count as of yesterday, so that’s a bit of a relief.
Finishing up the first draft of Book 3 of “The Great Dagmaru” is proving to be tough. Not because I don’t know what to do with it, but because it’s so angsty. It’s going to be a tearjerker right to the end.
So when I went to start my NaNo project, I rebelled. It’s a romantic comedy. I had to get myself out of the mindset of dark.
I sincerely wish I could decide on a subgenre and stick with it. I may have to publish one under a pseudonym in order to keep my “brand” intact.
Having a brand and being a human being at the same time is difficult.
How boring would I be if I was only dark or light?
Yin and yang would be waaaay out of balance.
Not good for the psyche.
Well that went totally off the rails, didn’t it? Time for the mall…
Another day, another failure at blogging. In my defense, I had Alex’s birthday party to deal with. Not that I did much regarding that all day, but it meant having to build his new Lego with him after supper. The good news is he’s getting better at putting the pieces together by himself. He’s much more dexterous that he was a couple of years ago.
But I have been working my fingers to the bone, finishing a proofreading job and actually getting some time on my next book. It’s coming along well. I have my plot holes figured out, which is always a good thing. Plot holes tend to slow me down. Knowing they’re there prevent me from moving forward. Good news on that front … it’s all about the fingers. You’ll have to read the book to find out what that means. đ
The other thing that’s kept me occupied all day is Twitter. I seem to have figured out how to sell books from there, but it’s time consuming. It’s also free, unless you consider that time is money, at least from the perspective of a freelance editor and an author.
I’m still totally motivated, so there’s that.
I’m even thinking about doing NaNoWriMo this year. But only if I can finish my third book in my series before the end of the month.
The Magician’s Soul.
It’s gonna be different.
But the fact that I’m enjoying it means, I hope, that everyone else will too.
Can I catch a break? Seems not today. Dealt with a cold and bad behaviour from my kiddie who’s about to become an adult-ie. He was supposed to have his eighteenth birthday party dinner with the family tonight but instead he ended up going to his room for hitting me. He’s still only about 5 feet tall and not muscular at all (I can still pick him up), so he didn’t do any damage, but that’s not the point. He’s still at the terrible-twos-going-on-adolescent stage of his life.
But I did kind of catch a break. When you think of the brighter side, at least I didn’t have to get out of my pj’s today to go to the store and get a cake. And I’m feeling a bit better, so that’s something.
I suppose all in all I don’t have it that bad. I have a roof over my head and a way to communicate to the world. I have a little bit of an income, though that will have to change, again, since Alex is turning eighteen. I stand to lose a huge chunk of my income starting Tuesday. Like, about half of it. Wanna buy a book?
In all honesty, I’ve been working quite hard at marketing these last few weeks. It hasn’t got me very far, but I’m hoping it’s just a learning curve. I’ve been playing around with Canva–a free online graphics-making site. I made this tonight:
It’s fun to play with.
Can I get better at it? Sure I can. And I will.
I can also finish the third book in my series and maybe even write another book before the year is out. I’m incredibly motivated right now, and I’m itching to act like an author again. I feel like I can do this.
Which isn’t a good attitude to go to bed with, because I’m probably going to stay awake plotting a new book, or my life or something.
Where was I going with the title of this post? Oh yeah.
Can I admit something?
I always wondered if Cannes was where the can-can originated.
I can look it up.
But it’s late.
I used to be able to do the can-can. Now I can only do it with my fingers.
My mother never baked, which is likely why I never caught on to it. My mother’s best friend’s mother-in-law, who lived with us for a while, used to bake. She had me “help” her when I was a child, but I was never that much into it. All I wanted to do was read and play by myself. And write books and stories.
I took a home ec class in high school. Half of it was sewing, which was what my mother did best. She made all of our clothes (c’mon, shudder with me), but that wasn’t something I enjoyed doing either. So maybe my mother had no influence on my lack of baking either? I dunno. I enjoyed knitting more than anything.
Anyway, the second half of my home ec class was cooking. I successfully made a banana bread in that Grade 9 class. I was so proud of it. I brought some home for my mother and myself and my boyfriend at the time ate it. I never forgave him for that.
Fast forward to being married (not to the banana-bread thief) and enthusiastic about making a home. I was 19 years old. Yes, I got married young the first time. I decided to make banana bread again. I was soooo careful. I put it in the oven and checked it when it was supposed to be done. Let’s say, for the sake of argument, 45 minutes later. Then an hour. Nope. Hour and ten? Nope. I finally threw it in the garbage at more than twice the amount of time it should have taken to cook.
That was the last thing I ever tried to bake, apart from pre-packaged muffins and cookies.
The take away from this story? The day I was de-floured was the last day I baked anything worth eating.
And if that makes no sense, it must mean I need a glass of wine.
It looks like this branch fell on the wires in the rain, hit just the wrong spot, and shorted out the transformer, causing the unscheduled fireworks display I witnessed. Not much damage, right?
But look what it did to the poor tree!
I shall forever refer to you as sparky.
I couldn’t get a clear picture, but the burn mark goes up pretty high.
I arrived home at eight tonight and pulled into my driveway, as I do. It was raining, so I got ready to make a run for the house. I grabbed my bag, opened the driver’s door, put one foot out, and heard a loud bang. Followed by many other loud bangs.
Fireworks? I wondered. No. A transformer blew about five houses down the street from mine, on my side of the street.
It wasn’t happy enough to go off with a pop.
No.
It crackled and sizzled and fizzed in all the colours of the rainbow, the sparks traveling up the wires to RIGHT BEHIND MY FRIGGIN’ CAR where I had, by then retreated with both feet, up and down and up and down for about a full minute before it finally fizzled out.
To say I was terrified and fascinated in equal measures is, well, pretty much the truth.
The extravaganza stopped at the transformer outside my house, so we have power. All my neighbours down the street aren’t so lucky.
I’ve seen a transformer blow before, but this was just … spectacularly horrifying!
I just wish I’d had the presence of mind to take a picture instead of sitting there peeing myself, wondering if I was going to make it the twenty feet to my front door.
Without being fried.
*doesn’t insert copyrighted image of Wile E. Coyote electrocuting himself
(Photos depict a Milk Bone dog biscuit bent at about a quarter of the way to the end, giving it a rather interesting appearance.)
If you would like to participate in this prompt, feel free to use the âOne-Liner Wednesdayâ title in your post, and if you do, you can ping back here to help your blog get more exposure. To execute a pingback, just copy the URL in the address bar on this post, and paste it somewhere in the body of your post. Your link will show up in the comments below. Please ensure that the One-Liner Wednesday youâre pinging back to is this weekâs! Otherwise, no one will likely see it but me.
NOTE: Pingbacks only work from WordPress sites. If youâre self-hosted or are participating from another host, like Blogger, please leave a link to your post in the comments below.
As with Stream of Consciousness Saturday (SoCS), if you see a pingback from someone else in my comment section, click and have a read. Itâs bound to be short and sweet.
Unlike SoCS, this is not a prompt so thereâs no need to stick to the same âtheme.â
The rules that Iâve made for myself (but donât always follow) for âOne-Liner Wednesdayâ are:
1. Make it one sentence.
2. Try to make it either funny or inspirational.
3. Use our unique tag #1linerWeds.
4. Add our lovely badge to your post for extra exposure!
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