A Day for Counting

I have decided enough negativity is about twenty times too much, and I have spent the last ten days or so whining, bitching, moaning and complaining. Therefore, I am going to make a determined effort count the flowers today.

• I woke up early, feeling rested.
• I got my chores done in good time.
• I have my eyesight
• It's a beautiful day outside.
• I have my mobility.
• The laundry is hanging on the line, absorbing the sunshine.
• I have my marbles and play with them regularly.
• I've spent hours writing, working on 'In A Green & Shady Place' before I set it aside for the month of November.

Tomorrow I have a couple of meetings and a big stack of work, so I won't go in and cast around for something to do. That's always a good thing.

Yep. Overall, life is very darned good, and I'm pleased.

One of the things I want to do in the next week or so is come up with a recipe for baked potato soup. I've had it from a restaurant, and it was good, although a bit too salty for my liking. On top of the salt in the bacon, I suspect they added more for "flavor". I've also had it from Safeway - their story version. It's quite good but I like my soup thicker. Progresso makes one, too, but that one's full of chemicals and crap to keep it "fresh" inside the can.

I want rich potato taste, thick broth and lots of savory flavor. I have my ideas, so I'll give it a try next weekend. As with everything having to do with cooking, if it's edible when it goes in, it will probably be edible when it comes out, even if it's not palatable. Fortunately, my palate is pretty forgiving and I very rarely end up with something I refuse to choke down.

Instead of heavy cream and/or half-and-half, which some recipes call for, I'll go for whole milk and yogurt instead of sour cream. There's no avoiding the bacon, * snap of fingers * oh darn! Celery, a bit of green onion for the milder flavor, sauteed together in butter since this is not something that will permit olive oil, unfortunately. Lots of black pepper, because I like black pepper, and lots of potato so it will be thick. Mmmm.

Right now, though, while it sounds good it's not mouthwatering. There was left-over salad from a catered lunch on Friday. No one else wanted it, so I bagged it up and brought it home. It was pretty limp by yesterday, even worse today, but it was still tasty.

And I keep telling myself that the calorie count really isn't that bad. It's all in the dressing, right? I'll ignore the croutons and shredded Parmesan cheese (it was mostly Caesar salad).

I managed to convince hubby that I didn't want to do more house clearing this weekend and he agreed. It was a grudging agreement, but it's Sunday afternoon and he's only complained once. By next weekend I expect we'll be nearly done and he can call for the bin. I just hope it doesn't rain once the bin arrives. But it probably will. That's how these things go, right?

The NaNoWriMo exercise is getting to be a challenge. I haven't started because that would defeat the idea, but my naughty alter-ego is pushing me to start. My angel side keeps saying, 'no, not until next weekend.' Fortunately, with the intervention of a week of work, I should be able to keep my honor intact and not start before November 1. Next Sunday. One more week and then...

I've played out what the first chapter will be in my mind, and I know what will come next and next. It's just hard not to put it down on paper. But I won't. Not until it's time and the starting gate lifts.

Looking in on the NaNo site I get the sense that some people are pushing the boundary. That they've started their writing. One even said they'll "reduce their November word count" by whatever number they have before then. Uh, yeah. Uh huh.

Sorry - but if you're going to cheat once, why would I think you won't cheat again?

Whatever. It's not really a competition with others. It's a competition with self - a how much quality can I put down on paper in thirty days? My goal is to get the 50k down in ten days and then spend the next twenty days editing and cleaning. That's pretty ambitious. Five thousand words per day, consistently. I just checked, copying from 'Shady' and discovered that five thousand words is roughly eighteen pages in Word. That's a lot of pages everyday and everyday.

But, it's a goal - not a requirement, so we'll see.

Anyway. Life and hubby are calling so I'm going to wrap this up. I hope you have a lovely day. Take a minute and count your blessings, too. Even the little ones have value - never take the good for granted.

Best~
Philippa

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Short and To the Point

Personally, and this is my blog so here it is all about me, I choose not to blather on today. Instead, I am turning this over to Lydia Marquez. Four minutes - about the time it would probably take you to read my post - just listen.

Stand up for what's right.

Philippa

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The Problem With Opinions

We all have them.

Yeah, yeah, I've heard that one, but I won't go there because it's unpleasant. It's too early in the morning for unpleasant. Not until after I've had my coffee and maybe not even then.

The problem is that they cause problems. You have yours, I have mine and in spite of ourselves, sometimes they tangle. It doesn't make either of us a bad person. It just means we're different people, with different outlooks and perspectives on things.

I'm a nice person. At least I like to think I am. I'm assuming you're a nice person, even if I don't know you. The people I know are nice and some are fun, others are a bit strange, some can be a little 'difficult', but they're all nice. Mostly.

For me being nice means I'm honest. I don't 'throw people under the bus' even if I could or really want to. I don't call names or say mean things about others, unless it's deserved and then I explain why. I will never say one thing about someone to one person and something different to the person about whom I spoke. I might couch it a little differently, but nothing more.

I mean, if I think someone's a jerk and I tell someone else, "I think Someone's a jerk." and it gets back around to Someone and they come to me and ask, "Did you say I'm a jerk?" I might not say, "Yeah, you're a jerk and here's why." Depending on who it is I might say that, if my relationship with that person is strong enough, otherwise I'd probably say something like, "In that situation you were." or "sometimes we're all jerks. That was your time." But I won't deny the having said it.

So I'm a nice person. I'm honest and loyal. I like to laugh and have fun, but I have opinions. They're pretty strong and they're mine and I won't deny them.

I think you probably have opinions, too. You think about things in a certain way. Opinions are a reflection of who we are and how we think. Opinions cannot, in and of themselves, be "bad" as in evil or mean. Because of how they develop, they can be flawed or faulty, but that doesn't make them "bad".


Whatever. Aside from politics and the opinions thereon about which this started and the cesspit I mentioned in yesterday's post, I received a couple of comments on one of my books on Authonomy.

Normally, that's good because it gives insight to someone's opinion about what I have posted, is it good, is it bad, what's strong and working, what's weak and boring.

Except these weren't. There was right next door to zero opinion in them. They weren't helpful. They didn't say 'this is great, but that sucked'. Instead, it was 'I'm reading. I like this.' There was nothing whatsoever of opinion. There wasn't much there at all, actually.

Etiquette there is that if someone reads and comments on your book, it's expected that you will read and comment on theirs. So I did. And I left honest comments - nothing flaming, except that was how the person took it.

I said I liked the title. So far so good. Then I read the short pitch - the little blurb that's usually in the big letters on either the front or back of the book. It's the advert that's supposed to hook you. It was pretty pedestrian and the three characters mentioned all had similar names, which I said might be confusing.

In the end, my opinion is that it needs more work. Paragraph structures are off, too many adverbs, all of the same things I have heard about my own writing. I said what I thought, gave my opinion and did it as delicately as I know how. Unfortunately, I hit a raw nerve.

This person expected nothing but praise. They thought, as I did the first time I posted something, that what they have is sheer genius. I burst their bubble because what I gave was honest opinion. Their feelings got hurt and it went around and I ended up spending more time explaining something that I shouldn't need to explain. But I did because I felt badly.

So there are a lot of opinions that cause problems. Politics aside, personal quirks aside, opinions cause problems so treat them with respect. Be gentle and thoughtful when you express them. Bear in mind when you express them to someone else, that there's a person with feelings and opinions of their own on the other end, so treat them with the respect you expect.

Have a lovely day.

Best~
Philippa

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People Are (Sometimes) Pretty Cool

Ya know, for all the bad raps put upon the collective heads of homo sapiens, people are actually kind of cool.

Yes, sometimes we’re stupid. We do things intending to be good and, more often than not it seems, end up screwing things up, usually catastrophically. But at least we try.

I mean take the honeybee. The European variety just wasn’t good enough. They didn't produce as much honey as people wanted so, back in the 1950’s, some brain trust decided to see what would happen to their productivity if they combined the mild-mannered Euro-bee with a cousin from Africa.  It worked. They mated and procreated and… disaster. The mild-manners of the polite Euro-bee were overtaken by the vicious sociopathic personality of the African variety. Now the Americas have a hybrid widely known as ‘killer bees’ because once they start to attack, they don’t stop. It’s like a mass suicide mission.

Then there’s the water hyacinth, a pretty water plant native to the Amazon River basin. In 1884, at the World’s Fair, they were given away as gifts. Then they became a problem, clogging rivers, stagnating water, killing fish. In 1910 a bill was introduced to Congress suggesting the United States import hippos to eat them. It didn’t pass (good thing because what we do with the hippos once they ate all the plants?).

We’re accused of killing the planet. To many, that’s not a matter for dispute. It’s a done deal. Everything, all of it, is the fault of people.

Personally, observing objectively and without emotion, I do think there are bad things that we do. In the end though, once the planet shakes us off through extinction (which will happen no matter how much we hope it doesn't), our impact in the overall scheme of things will be the equivalent of a single gnat’s fart.

The planet was around long before the first homo became erectus and will be around long after the last of us dies out.

It’s just that most people are: a) afraid of dying (as if they can do anything about it when push comes to shove); b) are passionate about telling everyone else how to live their lives (because those people have too damned much time on their hands).

For the first, get over the fear of dying. It’s going to happen. It’s, like, totally inevitable no matter what you do. If there were a secret to eternal life, it would have hit Facebook by now - sold in bottles and all.

Second, stop bossing everyone else around. If you have your panties hitched about ‘global warming’ and ‘carbon footprints’ you can always reduce yours to right next to zero. Stop breathing and things will take care of themselves. Just don’t expect me to devolve back to the Stone Age because you say it’s the right to do.

On the other hand, one of the coolest things about people is the good things they do for other species.

What other creature on this planet, no matter how benign in temperament, does things like consciously plan for the housing of other critters? Sure, some critters use things other critters have left lying around. Like crustaceans borrowing shells from others, after they’ve been abandoned. Swallows and varieties of wasps and hornets use buildings as support structures for their nests. People, though, are the one species that uses it’s intelligence to plan and execute living spaces for other creatures. Like these:

The first sits atop a post behind the building in which I work. It's old and weathered, but someone, at some point, made the point, took the time to buy the wood, cut it, put it together, paint it and mount it. Someone else who lives just uphill and across from the the guy with the musical fence, made the rest of these. There's another cluster on a different road on my way home at night.

Now, after seeing and appreciating these - the workmanship, whimsy and time involved - I think people can be pretty darned cool. Not perfect. Not by a long shot, but we have our moments of ultimate coolth, too.

Have a lovely day!

Best~

Philippa

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