Then the ants came. It’s the same every year; the infestation begins the moment the pumpkin goes outside. I know, I know there are ways to prevent this: I just wait until the last minute to put them out.
What really amuses me is the large chunks of skin the ants manage to throw out. You can see them on the step… and if you look really close you can see all the ants. Most of them were sleeping. Pumpkin must be to an ant like turkey is to a human.
So I propose the name of a new band. Who needs the Smashing Pumpkins when you can watch the Slowly-Being-Eaten Rotting Infested Jack-O-Lanterns?
I love it when a fortune cookie actually tells my fortune.
I did have an opportunity to edit this weekend, since the kids were with their dad. Now to play the lottery with those numbers… or did I miss it? I’ll check Saturday’s draw and see.
In other news, I went to the doctor about my shoulder and my eyes on Friday. She’s sending me for another ultrasound for the shoulder and I’m on Advil three times a day to see if it helps. Apparently if we can figure out whether it’s bone or soft tissue that’s causing the problem, she’ll know how to treat it.
My eyes on the other hand, she had no answer for. My bloodwork showed that I’m perfect – I already knew that though (haha) – so the good news is it’s not diabetes. Anyway, she said she’ll talk to an optometrist colleague this weekend and get back to me next week if they come up with any ideas. I thought of something that I neglected to mention to her since. I’ve been watching my diet, screen time, and all kinds of things to see if there was a common denominator to when I have problems, but the one thing I hadn’t watched was what I was drinking. I wonder if I get dehydrated, particularly when all I drink in a day is coffee and wine. I’ll mention that if she doesn’t come up with anything better.
Or maybe what I really need is more Chinese food to get my answer.
Anyone who would like to try it out, 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 ping back, 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.
As with Stream of Consciousness Saturday, if you see a ping back from someone else in my comment section, click and have a read. It’s bound to be short and sweet.
The rules that I’ve made for myself (but don’t always follow) for “One-Liner Wednesday” are:
There are some things I just can’t help. Eating the last few nuts in the tin even if I don’t want them, straightening out a crooked picture on the wall, … writing a blog post even when I’m too tired to write a blog post…
It’s been a hell of a few days, and the next three aren’t going to be any better. Last week I had two days off (meaning the kids’ dad picked them up after dinner one day and brought them back after dinner two days later) but the one in I should have had a full day off had an appointment for Alex smack-dab in the middle that only I could take him to, so I didn’t really get a day off at all. August was the last time I had one of those. All this to say that I don’t have the energy to write … anything, really. I suppose this is what being a writer is. Compulsion.
Unfortunately for all of you, it means listening to me whine about how tired I am. So here’s a consolation. A pretty picture. (Hunts for picture.) Ah, here’s one from the spring:
and look at that – it’s not even straight
What are you compelled to do, no matter what? It’s okay, go on. Admit it. We won’t judge.
If you’re wondering why there is no apparent fish in the photo, see this post: A Tuna Built a Nest Under My Front Steps! Either way, please click on the picture to see the full effect.
My trip to Ottawa to go backstage at the National Arts Centre was amazing! I managed to talk to a few of the staff members, including stage managers, prop builders, and lighting staff, I ate lunch in the green room, and took loads of photos.
Photo from one of the box seats
There are four stages there; the seating for the largest is above.
View from the back of the stage
I found out some handy tidbits of info. It is indeed possible to get horses on stage (in my novel, my character uses horses in his magic act). I was told they’ve had an elephant on this stage.
The stage will also hold a thirty foot ladder
My novel also has a ladder as a prop. I discovered yesterday how tall it can be – and also how they would set it up so it won’t fall.
The backstage corridors are like a maze. I got lost.
The ladies chorus dressing room
Getting ready to go onstage
(No, that’s not me.)
I had to find out what this was!
Apparently, a vomitory in a theatre isn’t somewhere you go to upchuck your lunch. It’s a quick exit from the stage. I learned something new!
I actually learned a lot of things–details–I will use in my novel. Even if the whole ten hour trip results in the fact that I know how to get a large animal on stage, that I know how many rungs my magician’s assistant will have to climb and whether they enter and exit stage left or right–and all this results in a couple of sentences or a paragraph–I will have accurate details! An essential part of any novel worth its weight, in my estimation.
First, I’d like to say hi and welcome to my new followers. I appreciate your interest in my blog, and I promise to come and visit all of yours the moment I have a chance. I’ll put a few pertinent links in this post so you can keep up with the rest of the class. Here we go.
I have no clue why I posted not one, but TWO one-liners today. Okay, I do have an idea – WordPress wouldn’t let me not schedule the one I had scheduled, and when I tried to change it to next week I must have messed up. If you haven’t read them both, you probably should. Each have links to other people’s one-liners. There are some great ones this week!
Then this afternoon I was contemplating life and dreams and things when I came up with a great concept for a new novel! Only I’m not going to have time to write it. Editing is slow-going these days, even though I’ve been working on it every spare minute I have to sit quietly. Only 50 pages to go out of 524. 😀
I’m still searching for the perfect sleeping companion. I’ve tried a few but none have worked out. I can tell you, it’s frustrating having a different one every night of the week and never finding the satisfaction I was hoping for!
My doctor’s appointment went… okay. She’s going to get the records from my old doctor’s office to see what my x-ray and ultrasound from last May said about my right shoulder, but she doesn’t want to give me any exercises to do until she knows. The last idiot doctor said, “Just stretch.” He also said it was arthritis, but the symptoms don’t fit. So I have to wait for another month before I get any results.
On top of that now, I had a hellish weekend with Alex and had to move all the furniture except his bed out of his room, by myself, because he was smashing it and putting dents in the walls. Mostly, I didn’t want him to hurt himself. So what happened? I hurt the other shoulder.
BUT, I had this weekend to look forward to. The kids were going to go to their dad’s… but wait! He’s sick and so are the rest of his family! So no break. He offered to take them anyway, but with the new super-bug that’s going around, I don’t need to take the chance that Alex will end up in hospital like when he had H1N1… or when he had pneumonia… or RSV… or bronchiolitis… or… you get the picture. I did however manage to wrangle some hours out of my eldest son for Sunday so I can do the backstage tour of the National Arts Centre in Ottawa. I’ll take pictures!
And speaking of pictures, it was Alex’s picture day at school on Monday. He looked so dapper I couldn’t wait for the official photos. This was taken before school.
He came home, however, with his shirt untucked and done up one button off, and the knot on his tie reaching his breastbone looking much like a drunken businessman.
Well! I got a nice surprise yesterday when I opened up an envelope that I received in the mail in, ohh, mid-July. I knew it contained the forms I had to fill out to send with Alex to school on the first day, and being who I am, I waited until the very last minute to have a gander. As it turns out, it wasn’t the last minute after all! Guess who had a “day off” on the very first day of school?
You guessed it!
So to celebrate, we went to the mall to buy shoes. … and rubber boots … and a baseball cap – all in Alex’s favourite, Spiderman!
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