Flashing the Mob

Flashing the Mob 

22 December 2010 

So I’m reading the Sisters in Crime listserve and come across an email about a new take on Flash Mobs. This time not a dance or song flash mob, (Since I can’t dance and tone deaf does not even begin to explain my daughter’s dread that anyone could hear me singing and thus insisted we go to the sparsely attended early service at St. Stephen’s, dance or song flash mobs will never be my thing.) but a group of people one after another reading the first lines of their favorite novels. 

Cool. 

But I misread the email. I thought she said the first line of our own projects. HUH! And it finally got through to me. After all the workshops, courses, books, and advice on how essential it is that my book hook the reader immediately, this finally cracked the glacier riding my brain. 

If I stood in a mall, and it came my turn to read that first line, and I had to keep the energy going, had to hook the crowds, could I? If I only had that one line before the next reader stepped up, not a chapter, not a page, not a paragraph, could I do it? Did my first line capture the attention of a mob of people?  

And I went back to the YA fantasy I’m working on. Yep. I changed the first line. Tell me what you think. And if you like send me a first line you changed from fine to SUPERB. 

Here’s the old first sentence:

“Until today I pretty much thought I was seriously special.” 

And here’s my revision. Would it keep the energy going in a flash mob? 

“So it turns out I’m not a fire witch.”

Kath 

Sans Kit

Sans Kit 

19 December 2010 

TaDa!

Despite much grumbling and threats of getting out the Puzzle Kit (rubber mallet and scissors), and nearly ending with three pieces that did NOT fit in the three remaining empty spots (The Prince Consort solved this. Apparently I’d managed to wedge a piece into the wrong spot, without the rubber mallet, which caused the last three pieces to not fit. Or something like that.), the puzzle is done. 

I can feel the black cat on black background puzzle coming up next. Not on the black counter. Somewhere I have butcher paper. Everybody who’s ever done crafts has butcher paper, right? Nice white, contrast to show the pieces, paper. 

How about you? What’s your favorite jig saw puzzle? And did you need the Puzzle Kit to finish? 

Kath

P.S. I am adding the Duck lamp (with 100 watt bulb) and the magnifying glass (just above the puzzle) to the puzzle kit. 

Waving the White Flag

Waving the White Flag

17 December 2010 

So it’s COLD. Icy cold. A salt truck slid off a county road and turned over. Black ice, compacted ice under the snow. We’ve had enough snow, rain, and icy rain, that our 300 foot uphill driveway is an ice slide. We must get the driveway cleared.

The Prince Consort and I get out the shovels and the broom. Yep, broom. Amazing how much ice and snow can be swept off a porch, walk, driveway. Better than a shovel.

Two hours and one scary slide thirty feet down the driveway before I throw myself off into the snow, we have enough ice and snow removed to throw ‘salt’ on the remaining ice. Our backs hurt, and I’m all sweaty under my fourteen layers. 

We’re being watched. 

We’ve discovered, much to our minivan The Dude’s chagrin, that our minivan is better on winter roads than the Camry Hybrid. The Dude is not amused by our wet and now cold climate, nothing like his native Southern California. In addition to his tarp (aka ‘blanky’) to fend off rain, snow, and now ice, we’ve purchased floor mats for our finicky mini van. As he will point out, wet muddy feet never entered his interior until he came to live with us. Fine. 

I swear we are Not buying the snowblower for The Dude. 

Our neighbor finished his drive in ten minutes. He bought a snowblower about two years ago. Smart. So The Prince Consort phones David and asks what kind of snowblower he has, does he like it, and where did he get it? David laughs. He and Lisa were wondering when we’d run up the white flag and buy one. 

The snowblower is due to arrive around December 27^th. The Dude says to name it The Snowman Bloweth. Seems long to me. White Flag would work.   Kath 

Puzzle Kit

Puzzle Kit 

17 December 2010 

So I have one of those moments. The kind where I say, out loud, “I have an idea.” The Prince Consort, being way past eye rolling or sighing, groans kind of low. 

But he cheered up right away. It was the annual “Let’s do jig saw puzzles.” I got out the card table while he whipped down to the ‘library’ (aka all-the-stuff-that-won’t-fit-anywhere-else-room). He returned with one of our oldie goldie puzzles. The one with the mountain and all the teeny skiers. Not a hard puzzle, and very appropriate to the weather outside. 

Despite the fact that we’ve done this puzzle over and over through the years, it took us three days. And a fair number of back and forth mutterings of : “Where are the scissors, so I can make this piece fit?” “They’re right next to the rubber mallet in case cutting isn’t enough.” This is known as the puzzle kit. 

We did not use the puzzle kit. But as we neared the finish on the skier mountain puzzle, (We found the piece that stuck to NikkiCat’s bottom long enough to disappear under the couch.) I began to think. I could tell I was thinking because of the creaky noise among my brain cells. 

This time I did not say it out loud. But I had a revelation. If I didn’t come up with an alternative, next The Prince Consort was going to bring his second favorite puzzle upstairs. The black cat on the black background. ARGH!!! 

So I went for: “I have a idea. We need a new puzzle.”

I went online looking for puzzles. Well, last time, probably in the last century, they didn’t cost that much. And last time we found them at Hallmark stores. You really need to see a puzzle before you buy it. Really. 

So we go on the big Hallmark store hunt. I was sure there’s one in the new strip center. TPC was not so sure. We drove past it 2.5 times. As we cruised by on the third pass, I finally spotted the huge Hallmark sign. (Not going to admit that the other two passes I was fixated on the candy store window.) 

We strike out. Hallmark is full of cards and Christmas stuff. What are they thinking? 

 So The Prince Consort steers to Hastings. Yep. Two shelves of puzzles. TPC picked out a nighttime NYC skyline puzzle. We started it right away. 

The puzzle being a panorama is long. Too long for the card table. So we laid it out on the black tiled kitchen counter. I talked TPC into a new puzzle to avoid the black cat on black puzzle, right? Well, duh. The dark NYC skyline put together on the black countertop. I’ve been out maneuvered again. 

Get out the puzzle kit.   Kath 

Baby It's Cold Outside

Baby It’s Cold Outside

9 December 2010 

Mr. Hose Nose, our rain barrel (and yes, one of our Arts and Crafts projects.)  lives in the backyard at the end of a downspout. He usually provides water for the deer bucket or the veggie garden. But not today.    Kath 

Christmas Presence

Christmas Presence

9 December 2010 

When The Prince Consort and I celebrated our first Christmas, we were pretty much busted.  Luckily The Prince Consort was a restaurant manager for Walgreens. With his discount, we bought an artificial tree (which lasted for twenty years), a string of lights, glue, and construction paper. I may have graduated last in my nursery school class, but that Christmas I glued my fingers and a pretty good, pretty long paper chain garland for the tree. 

But we needed ornaments. The back of the cornstarch box came to the rescue. Mixed with water and red food dye, the cornstarch made a great clay. I used cookie cutters, and we had ornaments. I even remembered to leave hangar holes for the pink stars. (Apparently the instructions were serious about how MUCH red dye to add to end up with actual red.)

While the paper chain didn’t survive to the next Christmas, the ornaments hung on. I still have one. It’s pretty close to a fossil now. Although I’m probably the only ‘archeologist’ who’d ever dig it out of the strata in the Christmas ornament suitcase. (a hard-sided Samsonite older than I am, if you can believe it.) 

Every Christmas we’ve bought at least one ornament for our tree, along with more lights, and non-paper-chain garlands. I’ve never quite given up on hand-making things. One Christmas I made a felt tree skirt and matching stocking. On another I sewed Nativity sets: stuffed Mary, Joseph, Jesus, stable, donkey, angels, everything. 

But just over three decades ago, we brought home the best Christmas ornament ever. Actually Our Daughter waited until three days after Christmas to be born. I don’t pretend to believe I perfectly mixed the ‘cornstarch’, water, and dye to produce this wonder, Our Daughter. The real Creator made her.

A year later, her first official Christmas, I don’t recall buying an ornament for the tree. But I do remember Our Daughter spending hours slowly opening the presents we’d spent more effort choosing than we ever put into a tree ornament. She delighted in everything, gift, wrapping, boxes, ribbons.

A Christmas later, Santa brought her a tool kit and a ‘doctor’s kit. She combined the two kits and directed The Prince Consort to lie on the couch and be the patient. I walked in as she was taking a hammer and screw driver to his chest. I turned and hot-footed it out of the room. He was on his own, and I was Not the next patient. 

Too few wonderful Christmases later she was old enough for a car. She inherited her father’s car, a sturdy German make, red enough to be easily spotted. Not that I stalked her. Instead I called her cell phone hourly, leaving appropriately hysterical messages when she chose to keep studying rather than answering the phone. Because of course that’s all she did when she left the house. Always. 

She escaped to Vanderbilt for undergrad, and Yale for her PhD. And now she has her own household in Texas, where she is a college professor. 

We may not have fashioned her of cornstarch and construction paper, but no matter how many years have passed, or how far away those years have taken her, she is still the most perfect ornament in our lives. God’s creation on our tree of life. And a presence every day, not just Christmas. 

Kath 

Ice Age

Ice Age

4 December 2010 

Two days ago we had a dusting of snow. The Dude (our California native mini van) made his Christmas list. He said that since we are too cheap to build him a heated garage of his own, he’d ask Santa for a waterproof heated fleece van cover. 

Today we had a solid three inches (which is considerable for our area).  I’m not going too near The Dude until the snow melts. 

On my trudge up to get the mail, I heard him grumble something about “Global warming my icy rump.” 

This is The Dude’s personal Christmas tree. At least I heard him say he was going to hang something on it. Or somebody. 

Going to be a very long winter. 

Kath 

Wingback of Dorian Gray

Wingback of Dorian Gray 

1 December 2010

Hallelujah! We finished the reupholstery project. This ranks as the toughest ‘arts and crafts’ project we’ve jumped into so far. And it did not make our ‘Let’s Do It Again’ list. While The Prince Consort and I are pretty pleased with the transformation of the moldy thirty-plus-year-old faux leather wingback chair into a black fabric masterpiece, we have had all the fun we want to have with pulling out and then re-stapling nine gazillion staples followed by hours of hand sewing because apparently Gorilla Glue does NOT attach fabric to a chair securely, enough.  

The Prince Consort suggested I photograph our finished treasure from a distance, like out in the driveway. And maybe with a piece of gauze or something over the lens to blur the picture. But you know. I like the flaws. 

Those wrinkles came out of our hard work and our best intentions.  Before our daughter was born, when we bought the wingback chair, the faux leather was tight and smooth. As were our faces.  All these years later, the chair is just as comfy, solid, and handsome. As are we. Now its upholstery, like ours, has some wrinkles.(I’m not admitting to any mold.) The chair’s upholstery has morphed from pleather to stylish black fabric with tiny polka dots. Sigh. And yeah, my upholstery/skin has dots/age spots, no longer the freckles of my youth.  

We don’t have a portrait in the attic that ages instead of us. We have instead a chair that has aged along with us. I don’t think we’re doing so badly. 

Kath 

Snowed In

Snowed In

1 December 2010 

My fingers were numb before I got around to hauling the garbage and recycle cans up the driveway. First I had to tend to a very put out Dude. (Californian mini van who sometimes refers to himself as Stranger in a Strange Land now that he lives with us in Kentucky.) 

The Dude had a dusting of snow on his wind shield, again! And it was snowing big soft flakes. While I knew the snow would not stick, or continue long, it’s better to humor The Dude. So fighting the wind that tore ‘blanky’ off The Dude four times, I tucked the tarp around him. 

By the time I came back down the drive from hauling up the garbage cans, The Dude has what he describes as “three or four feet of snow” on top of his tarp. (See photo.)  Not that he’s prone to exaggeration. The Dude insisted I include a photo that shows the “big bloppy” snow falling on the front deck (“where the umbrella that Should be Over The Dude is”). 

By the Way. The Prince Consort became The Dude’s hero when TPC nixed my idea of dressing out The Dude in mini-van sized festive reindeer antlers and red nose.     Kath