adaptation
I sort of have it fixed. It was the ac adaptor that got busted but I didn’t know that at first because this old laptop hasn’t had a working battery for years. Anyway, it will sometimes still conk out on me right in the middle of things but I am happy to have it back. I’m actually using duct tape to hold parts of it together. I was getting desperate to fix it because I just can’t do the long hand anymore. I have nine pages of the first page of a short story and it’s getting sadder every time I start it over. And there is only one line out of every three where I can actually decipher my handwriting. I guess over the years I have just grown too accustom to popping up a new document – giving it a working title and typing away: twisting and turning and changing and deleting and adding how ever I saw fit just to find a bit of joy when filing away a crisp and clean sheet of type even if it was only a bunch of clichés and poorly constructed sentences. Now on the other hand, my paper and pen approach makes me feel out of control, where my every day challenges with structure and organization come flying up out of the loose leaf at me – it is a scribble mess of pen marks, cross outs, squeezed to death words balanced on the heads of other words, lines with arrows twisted and contorted through every paragraph and up along the margins. It is a chaotic, scarred looking place where a spell check never ventured and any sane word counter would run screaming.
It does upset me, this realization that I lost the ability to write down a simple story without needing all these bells and whistles but I confess I need them. Although now I feel the computer has erased away all my romantic notions about writing. I always thought that someday, when I finally found the desire to pour my whole being into writing something, I would simply run off to an isolated cottage somewhere along the banks of the great Gaspe coast. And I would spend a whole winter there writing away with the chill of the north
Atlantic sweeping along the gaping mouth of the St. Lawrence, banging at my storm windows, causing the porch swing, out front, to creak and move reluctantly in its tarnished frame. And there I would sit snug inside the tiny cottage, in front of a small wood burning stove, scratching away at a story hours at a time and when my pen got too heavy, I would bundle up and wander down to a long and empty stretch of winter beach and watch the ocean rise and fall and think of my characters walking out from the surf.
But now I know the truth - that without an ac adapter and Internet I would probably last about four days before I started making paper dolls and airplanes out of my potential epic and perhaps even go running off into the surf myself thinking there must be a service provider just beyond the next wave.
opps
There was a bit of an accident with my laptop. It involved a cat, a daughter and a slippery surface. Thought i should let you know because i won't be blogging for a while. Actually the last four or five days with out the distraction of the internet was pretty productive for me. I am even hand writing a new short story. It is taking me a little time to rethink how to do that - once you get use to a word processor it's really tough not having a delete button at your fingertips or a copy and paste. But the bonus is that i am not trying to escape from my page every few minutes to go blog surfing. At some point I'll replace my computer. Greg uses this one for work and he is alway's working and the girl's are lined up to use it when he steps away from it. So, hope to be back but i have no idea when that might be. it was alot of fun blogging. Take care. thanks for stopping by.
animal farm
Just got back from the vet’s office with Lucky. The other night Erin said, “What is this big bump on Lucky’s back.” And she pressed it a little and the poor cat jumped about thirty feet. So, off I went with Lucky in her little green carrier to the vets this afternoon and he said it was an abscess that was probably the result from another cat biting her. Anyway she is on antibiotics and hopefully will be well quickly. I feel like I have a farm now with all these animals. The poor little degu (a birthday present for Erin about three years ago) has been demoted to basement dweller. I water, feed and clean his cage but for the most part I forget sometimes we have him. A degu is a little Chilean rat. Something Erin had to have and promised to love until the day it died but that loving feeling lasted about a year and now I’m stuck caring for the little guy. Beware of giving pets as gifts to kids unless you already came to terms with the likelihood of becoming this animal’s main caregiver.
So what else can I write about? I found this site and have been spending a great deal of time reading about writers who actually write. Who differ greatly from me because I spend far too much of my time reading about writers than writing. After a little confusion I also found out what WIP means -- I think I may start using that wonderful acronym. If you have seven lines does that constitute a WIP? It also crossed briefly through my mainly vacant mind that maybe I should put my blog there but then I thought I can’t put a blog title like mine on that page. They might think I’m a Lizzy Borden wantabe. Maybe I should change my title to behind the pen, or behind the mountain of laundry, or behind but trying to catch up.
It’s down in the cellar, behind the ax. That was Greg’s grandmother’s answer for anything that went missing. That’s why I named my blog that but really too most it must sound a little creepy. Thinking about it now, I don’t think I would click on a link that read behind the ax… things we learn in a brief moment of clarity.
raining
Just returned from giving my neighbour a crash course in computers. I think I overwhelmed her. I hope I helped her a little. It is another very muddy and wet day here and I refuse to mop up the kitchen floor after those dogs anymore. Once the rain lets up, I’ll give the house a good going over until then let the mud fly were it may. God love them, they’re sweet though. However my cedar globes are now flat and they pulled all the bark off the grape vines and ripped chunks of tile up off the kitchen floor. And Bow (aka marshmallow) is frightened of traffic so I need to pick her up and carry her across the major intersections. Greg just shakes his head and says, “You wanted them!”
And I do. They are entertaining and lovable and I have visions of them turning out into wonderful, well-mannered dogs. I'm a praying.
thanksgiving
It is a very wet day out there. Nothing like the smell of wet puppies - I think there might be a new scent for a glade candle with that one. Perhaps not. First off, before I pretend to do any work I need to get use to the humming sound from the new server in our office. Which just happens to be, the first small component of Greg’s master plan to take over the world. Seems like every other day now I’m accepting some large parcel at the door. The neighbours will soon be thinking, “What are they building in there?” I think Greg knows what he’s building but I’m hoping that the next ACME truck that pulls up with a parcel doesn’t have things in it like a large master switch, two dozen lightning rods and a pair of black steel-toe boots, size 19. I’m already nervous about this project.
This is a long weekend for us here. I’m hoping tomorrow is sunny so that we can go up north of the city for a drive. Visit a farm, get a pumpkin and some apples. The last couple of weeks were so off for me. I hope I can now get things back on track a little. Have a happy weekend.
October
The dogs were very well behaved today on their walk. They even stopped and sat for me at every corner. I have two new ideas for short stories, so I am looking forward to finding some time to work on them. I recently finished a story – had some fun with it but couldn’t really make it into the story I thought I had in my head. I think I will set it aside and look at it again in a month. The melancholy is still hovering around me a little. I think it’s because I didn’t go through with the things I had planned for this fall. Like signing up for those courses, mainly the creative writing course. I only got as far as the campus, in early August, to pick up a course catalogue but I had one of my wonderful panic stricken moments, stuttered as I tried to speak to someone, got my sentences all twisted in a knot and left embarrassed. If I had a nickel…
However, Monica received her first writing assignment back and the comments the teacher wrote on it made me feel very proud of my daughter– great piece of writing, excellent point and you said it so well, super introduction. Other teachers have also commented in the past on her creative flare and although I realize the pitfalls of wishing your dream onto someone else, I secretly wish she continues to find writing fun enough to pursue it a little.
I use to wonder why mothers would dress their little girls up in grown up clothes and have them prance about on stages in children beauty pageants. I now figure it must be because these mothers once had dreams of being princesses themselves and now feel the need to push these dreams onto their children. I hope to encourage Monica with her writing but I would never, ever pressure her. She mentioned it to me that she wanted to be a writer. Well, she also wants to be a designer of wedding dresses, a graphic designer, a model, a dog breeder and a chef – at her age she has ample time to decide. I do love that she writes though. I love finding balled up paper on the floor beside her bed and unfolding all the creases to read her first attempts at a story about a wood fairy getting ready for a winter ball. And I am reading it and thinking. “Shite, this kid already writes me under the table and she’s eleven.
My mother wrote short stories, with a bic pen in a hilroy scribbler. On occasion we would come home from school and she would ask us to sit and listen to something she had just written. She would be at the kitchen table with a cup of tea in front of her and a menthol flavoured cigarette balanced in the corner groove of a green glass ashtray and her lipstick would be perfectly applied and I would watch her mouth as she read us her stories and how she paused every few minutes to drag on her cigarette, leaving traces of her dark red lips on it tip. I thought she was brilliant.
There are still many days that I thank her for passing this fervor for writing down to me and now seeing it emerge in her granddaughter makes me feel like a link of sorts. A stepping stone that might keep its going. I am happy it got this far.
