The obligatory eight-legged occupant is back in my kitchen this year. Every summer, a small spider moves in and makes a web far enough away from where I normally walk that I leave it, thinking why not? It’ll eat the occasional fly and I won’t have to race around my kitchen with a tea towel chasing it (the fly). By July my occupant is medium-sized and by the end of August it’s a giant, sitting in the middle of its web patiently waiting for its next meal. It’s definitely more patient than my kids, I’ll give it that.
Except this year I have two eight-legged occupants in my kitchen. They’re about six feet apart and so far I’ve seen neither stray from its web. I just hope one of them doesn’t decide to visit its neighbour.
If I have hundreds of eight-legged occupants in my kitchen next year, I’m moving out. I already have hundreds of six-legged occupants in my kitchen. Fruit flies have six legs, don’t they? They’re too small to dissect, and anyway, by the time I’ve gotten one to slow down, it’s flat.
This post is going downhill. I’d better put an end to it.
Awesome new badge up there ^^^^^^^^^^^^^ 😀
Stream of Consciousness Saturday is a weekly prompt that I run … and sometimes I even participate before Sunday gets here! If you’d like to check out the prompt and read some of the other posts (which you’ll find links to in the comments) click on the following link: https://lindaghill.com/2017/08/18/the-friday-reminder-and-prompt-for-socs-aug-1917/
July 19th, 2013: My trip to Kingston was interesting indeed. With so many strange goings-on, I can’t help but wonder if I somehow ended up in my own novel. Without giving too much away, this is how it went:
The Hochelaga Inn was much as I expected. Built in 1879, it has been well-preserved not only in its physical appearance, but for its ambiance as well.
A Welcoming Prayer
Peace and rest, however, although perhaps wished upon me by the Management and Staff, were not what the Inn itself had in store.
Having not a great deal of money, but wishing to take an extended weekend away, I booked the cheapest room in the Inn for the first two nights, (Saturday and Sunday) and the Tower room–the most expensive–for one night (Monday).
My first night didn’t include much sleep. Three times during the course of my slumber, I was awoken by the fire alarm, which was situated on the ceiling beside a spinning fan, for no apparent reason. When I asked about it at reception the next morning, because I thought there might have been a problem in another room, they said they had no idea what had happened. Unfortunately, I was told, the Tower room was booked for that night, otherwise they’d have moved me in there early. So I gave back my room key with an assurance that I would be moved to another room for my second night at no extra cost.
The conversation between the two ladies I had spoken to at the desk, overheard after I walked away, went something like this:
“Her fire alarm went off three times last night.”
“Wooooo …” in a ghostly voice.
Okey dokey then.
Later, when I arrived back at the Inn after spending a lovely day wandering around Kingston and getting burned to a potato chip by the sun, I was handed the key for the Tower room.
“We were able to move you up there a day early,” the lady said without further explanation.
The house wants me in the Tower, I thought.
I happily I went up to my room to take a few pictures before dark.
The lower part of the tower.
The view from the top
It was a long day and I didn’t feel like doing much, so I sat on the bed with my feet up and watched a movie on my laptop. I didn’t bother to turn on the lights, and by half-way through the movie (The Brave, with and by Johnny Depp if you’re wondering) it was dark. That was when my friend decided to come along. I didn’t take a picture of my friend, and in fact I’m quite proud of myself for not throwing my laptop across the room. Let’s just say he had eight legs and appeared to be the size of Jaws as he scurried across my screen.
My second night didn’t include much sleep either. I think my camera catches quite well the state my eyes were in by Monday morning:
A lovely blurred view from the lower tower window
I spent most of Monday driving around town. I went to the VIA Rail station, where my two main characters disembark after having met on the train, and I was able to record many small details such as the waiting room seat colours and the fact that there are sliding glass doors on both the back and front. I drove from there to where my story is set–where I imagine the house to be–to see how long the journey would take, as well as noting different things they might see on the way.
When I got back ‘home,’ the first thing I did was look for the spider. There was no sign of him whatsoever.
Yay! I thought. I’m going to get a good night’s sleep!
HA!
So I was downstairs talking to the lady at reception again after having spent a few minutes poring over a framed blueprint of the Inn, from 1920 when they were hooking up the electricity. The house had changed quite a bit, and we were having a lovely discussion about where the rooms were and the staircase that wasn’t there any more etc.. when she mentioned the ghost.
“There’s a ghost here?” I asked, my eyes like saucers, I’m sure.
From there I went to a bar. Okay, I went to a restaurant. But must say I indulged just a little. As it turned out, I was sitting on the patio waiting for my bill when a strange looking man wearing a black cape and holding a lantern (click on the Haunted Walk link above for a visual) exited the building that housed the restaurant. He stopped and stood not six feet away, waiting. It took me a few seconds to realize he was the tour guide for The Haunted Walk. (Like I said, I’d had a few.) So I thought it might be fun to talk to him.
“Excuse me, are you guiding the Haunted Walk tonight?” (All right, all right. Maybe I was sloshed.)
“Yes,” he replied.
“I’m staying at one of the places on your tour: The Hochelaga.”
“Yes, that is one of the places we visit,” he said politely.
“Would you like me to put a sheet over my head and stand at the window in the Tower?”
I thought he was going to blow a gasket.
“YES!” he exclaimed, all but jumping up and down in excitement. “The people would love that!”
So guess what I did?
At dusk. I turned on the lights in the Tower so they would glow.
After the people left (they actually pointed at me, standing at the very top window at the front, looking down) I turned on the lights and went outside to take a picture of the most incredible Hochelaga Inn.
And that night? I slept like a baby knowing the ghost was safely tucked in bed.
Spooky, no?
To this day the spirit of the place haunts me. My characters, whose footsteps I was privileged enough to walk in, are with me in a way they weren’t before. The sights I saw are imprinted on my vision, deep and immovable. I’m lucky to have been able to visit the wondrous settings from which I was able to tell my story.
If you’d like to visit The Hochelaga Inn, click here for their website. I highly recommend it for its ambiance, its breakfast, and for the experience of sleeping in such a beautiful old Victorian mansion.
My Gothic paranormal romance, The Magician’s Curse, which is set in Kingston and features a house that is inspired by The Hochelaga Inn, is available on Kindle, Kobo, and in paperback on Amazon, as well as on the shelf in the Novel Idea Bookstore at 156 Princess Street in Kingston.
If you would like to participate in this prompt, feel free to use the “One-Liner Wednesday” 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 you’re pinging back to is this week’s! Otherwise, no one will likely see it but me.
NOTE: Pingbacks only work from WordPress sites. If you’re 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. It’s bound to be short and sweet.
Unlike SoCS, this is not a prompt so there’s no need to stick to the same “theme.”
The rules that I’ve made for myself (but don’t always follow) for “One-Liner Wednesday” are:
1. Make it one sentence.
2. Try to make it either funny or inspirational.
3. Use our unique tag #1linerWeds.
4. Add our very cool badge to your post for extra exposure!
High time I got around to writing my SoCS post, eh? I have 24 minutes ’til Sunday. I finally have time to myself. Got my glass of wine and my brand new container of Pringles that I just opened but suspect are somehow already stale. The expiry date is on the bottom of the tube, but it’s too dark here on the couch to read it. I can get up and hold it over my head near the light – I just sat down though. Time to be lazy. High time, in fact.
High time too that I changed my Gravatar picture. It’s now a selfie I took (hey, selfie isn’t a typo according to my spellchecker!) a year and a half ago in my hotel room in Akihabara. (Spellcheck doesn’t like that word.) I figure I’ve been depicted as a mannequin in a Santa hat long enough.
Update: the further down I go in my tube of Pringles, the fresher they get. And I’m out of wine. Be right back.
Miss me? Of course not. I wasn’t gone long. Okay, where was I? Oh yeah, highs and lows.
I’ve been measuring my days, of late, in terms of productivity and I don’t like it. My best friend (hi John!) always says that it’s a good day if he’s been productive and it kinda bugged me when he said it. Because good days should sometimes consist of doing nothing. (I almost wrote something rude – something my dog probably wouldn’t have appreciated.) The reason I feel this way is because if I do do nothing or get little done no matter how hard I try, I get stressed. And what good does it do to get stressed out about something I didn’t do in the past? There’s nothing I can do to change it.
I talk about this now because I have an entire week to look forward to of having Alex, my youngest, home with me. I’m going to get fuck all done (thanks, wine) and I don’t want to get upset about that because I know me, and I know I’m going to take that upsetness (thanks again, wine) out on my poor innocent angel. (Ha! I’ve gotta stop drinking. Oh look, Pringles!)
Okay, so my kid can get downright obnoxious when he wants to. But he mostly does it when I’m trying to ignore him and get my own work done. I know, I know, I can’t expect him to behave and do his own thing if I dote on him. He needs to learn to play and do things independently, and respect that I can’t always pay attention to him. But there’s a fine line there, I think. I’ll just have to be happy knowing that productivity, this week, is gonna be low.
P.S. The Pringles aren’t supposed to expire until Sept. 2018, so the top must have been open. I’m gonna die!!
Waiter! More wine! I wanna go down happy …
Wouldn’t it be nice if we had more hours in a day? Or if we could just not have to spend so much time sleeping? I normally only get about 5 hours, but that’s five hours I could spend doing all the things I have to do. I actually slept in until 10:45 this morning because Alex (my youngest) is at his dad’s this weekend. I came downstairs to find the dog with his legs crossed (not really – he can hold it a long time) and thought to myself I wish I’d gotten up earlier. But we need sleep once in a while, right? Ugh.
I’m often tempted to use the phrase “I’d give my right arm…” but really, would I? Imagine what that would do to my gait when I’m walking… I’d be going in circles all the time. Typing would be a hassle, as would giving people hugs. One-armed hugs are so impersonal, though I suspect anyone getting a hug from a one-armed person would not likely take it personally. (Seriously, if anyone out there is missing their right arm or knows someone who is, I mean absolutely no disrespect. Just musing on the realities…)
Actually, I have lived without the use of my right arm for the most part when I had a frozen shoulder. Remember that? My gratitude for my right arm has increased tenfold since then. Although I did retain some of the dexterity I gained from having to be left-handed. And oh! the sleep deprivation when my shoulder was frozen! I’ve never known such pain!
So I guess I’ve answered my own question. Would I give my right arm for sleep? Apparently not.
If you would like to participate in this prompt, feel free to use the “One-Liner Wednesday” 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 you’re pinging back to is this week’s! Otherwise, no one will likely see it but me.
NOTE: Pingbacks only work from WordPress sites. If you’re 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. It’s bound to be short and sweet.
Unlike SoCS, this is not a prompt so there’s no need to stick to the same “theme.”
The rules that I’ve made for myself (but don’t always follow) for “One-Liner Wednesday” are:
1. Make it one sentence.
2. Try to make it either funny or inspirational.
3. Use our unique tag #1linerWeds.
4. Add our very cool badge to your post for extra exposure!
When someone famous (I thought it was Hemingway; upon investigation, I found that it could have originated from numerous people) said something like writing is easy: just bleed on the page, I don’t think they were talking about bleeding on the book after it’s written. But I almost did that today.
My friendly local UPS man came to my door with the first of two boxes of my books. I signed for it and hurried into the kitchen for a knife to open it. That was my first mistake.
As I sliced open the box, the knife slipped and I stabbed myself, millimeters away from the vein in my wrist.
It doesn’t look like much, but it’s deep.
So if you want to buy a copy of my book, for pity’s sake please buy it directly from Amazon and not from me! You may never get to read Book 2!!
There were only six books in this box – when I get the other 44, I promise to try to avoid slitting my throat. 😉
I’m a bit of a perfectionist. Which is an oxymoron in and of itself, because how can you be an imperfect perfectionist? I suppose what it comes down to is some things I absolutely insist on getting perfect and some things I can say it’s good enough and leave it. But not without a lot of internal finger wagging.
I have to wonder how much of my perfectionism I’ve handed down to my kids. It’s really a bit of a disservice, when you think about it. Our kids inherit our fears, our dislikes, our prejudices, and yes, our insistence on getting things right. At least some of our kids do. I suppose it depends on whether you see perfectionism as a positive or a negative.
As I typed the above list of things that our kids inherit, I tried–I really tried–to write something positive, like our love of music or our appreciation for having a clean house, but these things are not always so. Yes, sometimes our kids inherit our positive traits somewhere down the line, but it’s more often they inherit the negative ones. I wonder why that is.
But I digress. Is perfectionism a positive thing or a negative one? I’m thinking it’s positive until it gets in the way of having a sound mind. I can drive myself crazy trying to get something right. But once it’s there, I’m happy with it. It’s a relief. There also comes a point when I know I’m just being picky, which may or may not be a positive thing. It’s easier to let go of a picky point than a perfectionist point.
Have you picked up my new book, The Magician’s Curse yet? I now have three rave reviews and one pretty good one on Amazon.com. Check it out and please take a chance on an indie author!
(Note: In the online preview, the formatting (tabs and spaces between paragraphs) is off in a few places. The copy for sale does not reflect this. I’m working on getting the “Look Inside” fixed.)
If you would like to participate in this prompt, feel free to use the “One-Liner Wednesday” 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 you’re pinging back to is this week’s! Otherwise, no one will likely see it but me.
NOTE: Pingbacks only work from WordPress sites. If you’re 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. It’s bound to be short and sweet.
Unlike SoCS, this is not a prompt so there’s no need to stick to the same “theme.”
The rules that I’ve made for myself (but don’t always follow) for “One-Liner Wednesday” are:
1. Make it one sentence.
2. Try to make it either funny or inspirational.
3. Use our unique tag #1linerWeds.
4. Add our very cool badge to your post for extra exposure!
I have two things I want to post today but I’ve been procrastinating since I got up while I tried to choose which one to post first. The two things are (or were) this SoCS post and my cover reveal for my new novel, The Magician’s Curse. As you might have guessed by now, I decided to grace you with this gem first. 😛 (I do think a lot of myself, don’t I?)
While I was dithering deciding, I was looking for a sign to tell me which order to post them in. I do that a lot – look for signs.
Forgive me if you’ve heard his one before – even if you have, it bears repeating. A whole bunch of years ago, while I was feeling sorry for myself because I was alone, I was looking for a sign that I wouldn’t be forever lonely. I used to do automatic writing back then, which isn’t really that much different than letting a character guide my writing when I’m penning a book. It seems to come from nowhere. Outside of the worldly realm. Whatever. Anyway, I don’t remember the exact details, but I wrote something like, watch for signs passing by. It made no sense whatsoever – you pass by signs on the road, not the other way around. At least that’s what I was thinking.
Then the next day I was driving somewhere, diligently looking at all the signs, when I looked up just before I drove under a bridge that crossed the road. There going across above me was a city truck full of road signs. Made me laugh – it’s something I’ll probably never forget.
By now you’re probably wondering what the sign was that made me post this before the cover of the book you’ve been waiting for since I first mentioned writing it four years ago when I started this blog. My sign was the dog wagging his tail in his sleep while I thought of writing this. Not as spectacular as signs passing by on the road, but I’ll take what I can get.
Watch out for my new cover, would you? Thanks. 🙂 Drumroll please…
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