decision made / Strange animals, fin.

I have made my decision. Ries and and Iakonna get their way. They will be able to express themselves how they need to. Course, at least at the beginning, they will be swearing in Greek…and depending on their other lives as the series continues, we will see what language they will be swearing in. By the time they get to living in the present in America, they will be in English. We will play by ear though. Ries is happy, but not happy that I will let him out tonight. He is out for blood. Of course, mom and dad are not happy. They don’t care for swearing at all, no matter what, but when I explained Ries and Iakonna’s position and whatnot, dad was more understanding.

I did not get much writing done today. between major aches and pains, and all of the distractions…the writing was slow and tedious. Even Shashanna’s attempt to commune with the gods. So, after a bit, I gave up.

For me…I am still making up for the nights of bad sleep, so I am going to try to go to bed early tonight. we will see.

When mom and dad got back from the auction…they did not get the horse we rescued back…a big ranch told them that no matter what they bid, they were going to out bid them. But they did get a mare. papered quarterback. 1.5 years old. waaaay underweight. But she has already attached herself to all of us. Of course, we are going to keep her registered, which means officially we cannot change her name, but we are going to change the name we call her on an every day basis…we are still hashing out names. Mom and dad don’t like my suggestions of Greek names. I knew they wouldn’t. They don’t care for them. So, of course, I was just anming them off just to torment them.

For now, I am going to sign off…with the last installment of the “strange animals”. Tomorrow is Sunday…who knows what it will bring. We will probably finish laying the bamboo hardwood floor in the other half of the office. Of course, when the office is complete, I will post a picture of it.

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Strange Animals, fin.

Then we have Mo. We think Mo is part Blue Heeler and part Jack Russell. He came into our lives in a traumatic way. Dad ran over him with our water trailer when he left for town to get our water. It was winter time, just after, or just before, we put Orion down. I think it was just before. When he slid under the water trailer and dad ran over him, he broke his hip and leg in 6 places. We were almost sure he would have to be amputated, but for the most part, he acts like it was never hurt…but you can tell when he overuses it. He is a protector of women, especially me. You even look like you are going to hurt a woman and mo attacks. He is a hoot with my dad, though it is actually bad things my dad teaches him. My dad will come into my room, and when he is wearing his sweats, Mo tries to pull them down. Mo is to the point that he doesn’t like eating his treats unless dad tries to take it away from him. If he cannot find me, he goes into sheer panic. He will run through the house with his eyes open wide and dilated until he finds me. If he can hear me outside, but he is not with me, he whines and cries until I come back in. When he wants to snuggle, he throws himself across your lap. He doesn’t lay down, he tips himself sideways and falls onto his side, or he will throw himself down head first. But one of the strangest things he does is as he is walking along, he will put the top of his head on the floor and continue to walk, while dragging the top of his head across the ground. Or he will put the top of his head on the floor from a standing position and lift his front legs so that he is standing on the top of his head. I cannot be in the bathroom without him, and when he is in there, he growls and grumbles until dad comes to rattle the door, when he gets happy and attacks the door. He also lays under my bed, and no one will be around, except me on the bed, and he will lay there, throwing himself down and grumbling the whole time. He is the most grumbliest dog I know. He also gets very upset when he sees a squirrel or chipmunk go under the house. he will attack the window.

Finally, we have Antiphone. She is interesting as well. We haven’t had her a year yet…only 9 months. She is about 13/14 months old…so she hasn’t had time to fully develop or show her personality. We do know she has health issues as well…She has a slight respiratory problem…she is constantly sneezing. And just recently she had a seizure. She is very loyal to me and again, like Orion, likes mom, but can’t stand anyone else…especially males. She is such a klutz though. I think she falls down twice as much as I do LOL.

bit of a quandary

I have been sitting here for a little over an hour, staring at the screen. The Prank is there. I know what I want to say, but I am facing a bit of a decision. this decision is not much of one in the scheme of things, especially to most writers…but, well, for me it is a bit of one. one of the reasons, when I first set out to be a writer (well, after I reached about 16…I always wanted to be a writer), but one of the reasons I originally went toward children’s books, is so I didn’t have to face this decision. But children’s books are not my thing. especially the older I get. So, I avoided this little problem by settling for young adult. I could get away with a little, but it still was not much of a problem (yes, I am purposely avoiding mentioning what it is for a moment LOL). but my books, my writing, and I am evolving, and so now, I have to face the decision that I have put off for so long. swearing. adult scenes. Like I said, writing for young adults, I cussed a little. Maybe a hell here or a shit there. but that was all. so now, I am having to face the much bigger picture. I, myself, don’t have a problem with it. My sister has broken me of being afraid to express myself. but this is the problem. The Prank is calling for a lot more than minor cussing. My characters want to be able to express themselves without limit. If I was just writing for myself, I wouldn’t even be hesitating over this. In some of my private works, I have gone a lot farther than full-out swearing. but, where others will read these stories, I am a bit hesitant…because I know some of my fan-base is younger. but that is not the full reason. I know the younger kids are exposed to much more than I was at the same age. The hesitation is coming about family reading it. a lot of my family are Mormon. some of them staunch. Then there is dad and mom. my mom hates swearing with a passion, and hates it even worse if it comes from her children. Dad…well, I don’t know about him. I am more vocal around him than I am around mom, but he doesn’t read. not even my stuff. So, I need to make the decision. Do I go ahead, follow my characters leads, follow my own inclination…or sensor myself for the benefit of my family. I know, everybody will shout “You gotta go with the characters, you gotta follow your inclination.” but with my family, that is not nearly as easy as that sounds. So I have been sitting here, staring at The Prank, at Reis and Iakonna. Especially Reis. He is in a rage, and he wants free reign, and I want to give it to him. but if I do, it will shock all my family out of their belief that I am this innocent woman who has barely dated, so she doesn’t know much about life. LOL that in of itself would be funny to see. So…Reis. I know you want to rage, you want to yell, you want to storm to Hera and rip her head off…but, adelphos, you are going to have to stay in your waiting while I make a decision. More than likely, you will be able to do what you want…though I don’t think you will be able to rip Hera’s head off…but other than that, I think you will be able to do what you want. You just have to wait until I can make my final decision. So…I guess I will go work on chapter 2 of Mu Mysteries. Shashanna needs to commune with her own gods. I hope you don’t begrudge her that.

This is June?

I don’t think this is June. It feels more like October. We skipped over Spring. Have had more wind this year than we usually get in a full years time. Our monsoon season is at least a month early. And now they are talking of snow tomorrow. It is almost a daily occurrence of still having fire’s in the fireplace. I think Utah changed its place where it usually resides next to Colorado, Arizona, Nevada…Who monitor’s where the states reside, because I think where we usually are, is a big gapping hole, and land mass in the shape of Utah has appeared someplace else in the world. LOL. The last time we had snow in June was when I was 16, 16 years ago. And that was a freak snow storm…this one they say is going to come tomorrow is forewarned, whereas the one 16 years ago was not. So, my other theory, if the one that Utah moved, is that the calendar’s are lying and it is not actually June. I need to put something warmer on, and where are my gloves? Even with a fire going, it is dang cold. Sheesh!

sleep? what’s that? (and) Strange Animals, cont.

Like last night, I am having a hard time getting to sleep. I hate when I get into these periods. Normally I have to have at least 10 hours of sleep, preferably 12. but then I get into a mode where I cannot sleep worth anything for a night or two. I hope it doesn’t turn into a completely sleepless night like last night. I didn’t get to bed until 7:30. Luckily, even though mom didn’t know it, she let me sleep in till 11. But still.

There are 2 games for the iPod that I have become completely addicted to…Peggle and Phase. I play them, thinking I will play only a couple of rounds, then I realize that I have been playing for ages. I am the same way with Titan Quest on my computer. I don’t get into gaming moods very often, but when I do, I sink into them. One nice thing about Titan quest, is it gives me ideas for Hubris.

Tomorrow, I will be spending a lot of time helping dad lay the bamboo flooring in the office, then we need to build the custom shelves, and I will then be able to move into it. It will be so nice to get the computer out of my room…partly because I am on it when I should not be, partly because the lights irritate me sometimes at night, and mostly because my cat, Clarence, loves to climb all over the equipment and knock things off. So I either get woken with crashing noises, or the creak of metal and plastic as he walks across it. I am so looking forward to having the office, where I will be able to have my research material organized and places to put things.

I am not looking forward to Monday. I go to the dentist. My teeth are horrible. They are cracking and crumbling, and I am in constant pain with all of them. I know they are going to try to convince me to let them “fix” them, but I am tired of the constant pain, the constant problems cropping up, and I know they are affecting my health and aggravating my health problems. So I am going to have them yank them. Both my mom and her mom had to have dentures put in at a younger age too, and my grandma’s teeth did the same thing mine are. Besides, I know dentures are going to be costly, but I know that trying to fix these suckers will cost me a lot more. I know dentures will not be a miracle cure, I know I will have problems over the years with them, but compared to what I am putting up with in regards to my teeth now, it will be worth it.

I have determined that the gods are going to let my body decay thoroughly, yet keep me alive. By the time they are done with me, I will be completely decayed…which will only reflect the fact that I am rotten to the core ;-)

I am waiting for my iPod to finish syncing, then I am going to go read and hope that I will go to sleep. Hope is a very vicious demon. Both my sister and I feel that hope was the cruelest demon released when Pandora opened the box. Don’t know why I still say “I hope this” or “I hope that” when I know all it does is slams me down in the long run. I guess it is sort of like begging to the gods for help, when they do not want to listen LOL.

Ok, I am going to put two more “strange animals” up. That will leave two more to finish the segment. Hope (there is that dreaded word again) that you enjoy these two.

 

Strange Animals, cont.

Next we have Boots. Boots is a…well, I don’t know for sure what he is, other than almost totally black. He showed up one day and never wanted to leave. So we eventually adopted him. We figure someone dumped him and, somehow or other, like all animals do, found out that we must be the place to live. I swear he should be in a circus. He flops himself any which way he can. he will leap across the couch. We cannot keep him penned in, his theme song is “Don’t fence me in”. Anytime he goes outside, he almost immediately finds a way through, over or under the fence. We have tried everything we can to keep him in, but he must be part Houdini. It is not uncommon for him to squirm his way around on the couch so that he is on his head in the corner, or he is literally bent in half sideways. He is always bringing friends home with him as well.

Then we have our plucked turkey…I mean our Blue-and-gold Macaw, Samantha. She lived in two abusive homes before she was rescued by one of our friends and then us. And she is only 17 years old, just a baby. She has had so much emotional trauma to her that she refuses to let any feathers grow on her except her wings. Any time they start growing, she plucks them out. And if she is not getting enough attention, or if I walk past her, she squawks and screams. I threaten (especially in the wintertime) to release her into the wild ;-)

Killer toys

I had a dream last night. a vicious dream. I woke up from it feeling like I did at least 2 rounds on every weight lifting machine at a gym…every muscle hurts. I hate when my dreams make me hurt like that. It is usually the ones that I am fighting in that does it to me…usually they are dreams of fighting demons, “shadows”, or ancient battles. not last night. sure, it was a fight dream…but the subject is not one I would ever have thought would enter my dreams.

It was a dream of killer toys.

Literally.

Brad was in it with me, but then there were several others whom I have no clue who they are. Brad appears in my dreams quite a bit…need to look into that. But I digress.

In it, I come home to a home that I own. That in of itself is quite amazing LOL. Here is where the weirdness starts. I walk into the house, and it is ultra-modern…I ain’t no modern gal. The only thing in this house that fit me was the electronics. LOL. It looked like the house was being converted to a smart house. So, I start looking around the house, and it is trashed. Things are busted, toys and furniture is scattered all around. I see Brad slouching on a bench outside the house in the back yard. I yell at him for trashing my house. He just glared at me. I go back in to start the cleaning, muttering to myself the entire time. I start picking up the toys (including baby toys. I have no idea why this house is just littered in toys, of all kinds. Old fashioned, high-tech, simplistic to the most complicated.)

Still muttering about messy people, and then it starts. At first a toy twitched. I didn’t think anything of it. Then they started moving. um hello…the ones the ones that were moving had no way of moving…some were blocks. Yet they were moving. I start backing away, to get tangled in one of the stuffed animal nets. It had strung itself behind me, and when I got near it, it wrapped itself around my head and neck and started to strangle me.
I managed to get out of it and started running through the house. I run to Brad and he just looks at me and says “it’s happening again, isn’t it?” I mean, what in the world?

So him, I and the other people go back in and try to break the toys, but they are still coming at us, in greater and greater numbers. Brad get yanked into a suddenly full bathtub by what looks like a inflatable clown. (Yes Seaira…those damned clowns…But I got him ;-)

We try hacking at the toys, popping them, breaking pieces off of them…someone grabbed a sawz-all (or however that is spelled), but nothing. the toys kept coming and coming. If we did get a piece broken from a toy, it started coming after us.

I could see we were quickly being surrounded and vastly outnumbered. I could see breaking them or damaging them in any way was not working. I didn’t know what to do.

I happened to touch a toy with my right hand index finger (that toy looked like wet seaweed, it was something from a fish aquarium) . It made like a high-pitched screech and cowered away from me. The first time any of the toys had backed off.

I looked at my index finger and then I pointed it at a toy and said, “Die toy!” Nothing.  So I touched it with my index finger and repeated it, and it started to turn black and decay, like a toy left untended for decades. It was still alive, but it was dying. It took a couple more times before it completely died.

We started attacking the toys like that, each of us with our index finger. We were leaving toys behind us, dying or dead. but they were still coming in vast numbers. For every one we killed, two more took its place.

Suddenly I saw a toy about my height behind me, I spun around. It was a life-sized Raggedy-Andy doll. I went to use my index finger on it, and it somehow communicated with me that it was there to help. we were soon joined by about a dozen other toys that wanted to be on our side. But still, the toys kept coming.

It thought to myself “Whatever is driving these toys must have a central driving point. something evil enough to control all these toys and keep them coming.” So me and everyone on our side fought our way upstairs and into the living room. I started calling for the “boss.” Shouting for him to show himself. to take me on if he dared.

LOL, he came alright. but not nearly what I was expecting. The source of all of the evil in the house was…none other than a Fathead full sized cut out of Michael Jordan. LOL. He started throwing basketballs at us, and I started fighting him…but before I could defeat him, I woke up.

I still can’t believe it was a cut out of Michael Jordan of all things LOL

 

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So, you are probably wondering what I am doing up at this time of the night. My blood sugars decided to skyrocket and I had a hot flash at the same time. I keep having mini hot flashes, but not near the one that I had when I woke…I was asleep earlier. I really really do hate being human.

I joined a online critique group earlier this evening, and got my confirmation of joining just a little bit ago. The group is Critters. They are highly recommended, and work closely with the SFWA (Science Fiction Writers of America). They are a source for Science fiction and Fantasy writers…I don’t quite qualify to become a member of them yet…but I am getting close. I am hoping that Critters will help me in a couple of specific ways…1) help improve my own writing of course,  and 2) keep me kicked in the butt to get things written faster and in higher quantity/quality… so I can stop being such a procrastinator. I also have always enjoyed helping other writers. So this will be fun for me. I just have to get my first submission into their format so I can submit it into the queue to be critiqued, and in the meantime, I look forward to getting other people’s work to help them.

I think I am just about ready to go to bed, so I am going to sign off. But I did want to say one other thing. I still have a few more animals to blog about in my “strange animals” segment. The last few blogs I have done have been a tad too long to include animals into it, but I will be blogging more about them soon ;-)

To-do list

because of not feeling too good the past few days (I am feeling better today…so far my breathing is easier), I am very behind in some things. Make that many things…okay, make that many things for me. it probably won’t seem like many things to others, but with my health and pain…it seems like a lot LOL.

Let’s see…what do I have to do…

• I have to cook dinner throughout the day. Normally we have light meals during the summer, but we don’t have anything light in the house. Luckily, we have the slow cooker, so that we don’t heat up the house too much.
• I have to open and layout the bamboo flooring so dad can have easy access when he starts putting it down
• I have to dust and vacuum and clean the house, especially the bathroom
• I have several loads of laundry to do…it has been piling up because of the septic tank issue, but we are allowed to put more water down than we were in the past few weeks…still not our normal amount, but more than before.
• I have to organize my research books (and a couple other books) so that I can find them easier
• I have to do some research for both The Prank, Mu Mysteries  and I have to lay down some more background info for Grakas.
• I have to reread Judgment…I was unsure if I was ever going to do a sequel to it or not, but I think I might. Of course, I want to get Into the Forest’s sequel done first. I know the story of Judgment…I lived with it and worked on it for so long, but I need to refresh details of the people and places in my mind, so need to take some notes on it.
• I need to reformat my iPod…it is malfunctioning on some of the lists and I can’t get them to work, no matter what I do. Which also means I need to finish the upgrade of iTunes before I can do it.
• I need to get some banking done
• And, of course, I need to get writing done. My dreams are bugging me something terrible, and so I know I need to write. Its getting bad enough with my dreams that I am having a hard time telling reality from dream and visa-versa.

I think that is all…for right now. LOL. Of course, knowing me, some of this will be put off, again. **whistles innocently**

not much

I haven’t done much of anything the past few days. I have had such a hard time breathing. I have used my inhalers, mom’s oxygen, more inhalers, trying to do deep breathing techniques, and finally some antihistamine. Got a little bit of relief last night, but I am having a hard time breathing again. I might have to go in to the clinic in town and see what other options are available for me. Cause this sucks.

It doesn’t help that we are in our afternoon thunderstorm pattern and the trees are pollinating. It also doesn’t help that I discovered mold in my closet the other day. Gotta love it LOL.

Amazingly enough, the blood sugars are not being too bad right now. course, I have been having to play with my insulin delivery rate again.

That reminds me, I have to try to call the person I am working with at Medtronic Minimed to find out what we need to do next to get me my new pump. I also have to call my doctor out here to get an appointment with her to talk about a few things…I definitely need to get this pump before the end of June when my doctor out here is leaving and a new doctor is coming in. One problem with going to doctors out here instead of Salt Lake…we have a pretty big turnover for doctors. They think they will like small town living, and find out differently, or get a better offer at another hospital.

They are still trying to get the septic tank working right. they run into problems left and right. Now they are having to dig deeper than they originally planned, and they are having to dig through a layer of shale rock to get to the angle they need the lines to go at. It will be so nice to have it finished. we are limited to how much water we put down the septic tank right now, and being where the original leech lines were clogged and collapsed, it does not smell too pretty. LOL. It is amazing what smells you can get used to though…pretty bad that you can get used to a sewer smell :-S I have an idea of what the ancients had to live with when they were dumping their slops in the streets and using chamber pots. It also gives new appreciation for the more advanced ancient civilizations that learned how to conduct water through the first pipes.

Speaking of advanced ancient civilizations…don’t forget to check out the first chapter of Mu Mysteries located for free at my website, www.enchantmentofthemind.com Or, if you want something a little more modern with a twist of fantasy/paranormal in it, be sure to buy Judgment at Witches Court, available through most retailers, especially online, or at the publishers website, www.mundania.com (Shameless plugs) LOL.