The breeze through the bedroom window this morning feels like rain, smells like it, too. I haven't checked the forecast, but I do trust my senses, especially my sinuses, which are stuffed, and my head aches, a sure sign that there is rain in the forecast. My sinuses and head are much more reliable indicators about the weather than barometers, thermometers, meteorological gadgets, and weathermen (or women). Ever since I moved to the mountains, I get the weather results on a direct feed to the brain.
This is a weird week since I'm off work and finished four book reviews last night. Those are the last books until December since I've decided to take the next two months off. I need a break. It's difficult finding new words to same the same old things. This is a good, mediocre, awful, wonderful, or horrid book. The details are important, but there are only so many ways to say a book is over written or the story line is flat lined and no amount of CPR or literary fireworks will change that. Dead is dead.
The trick is to find something nice to say about the book. Don't want to completely deflate an ego that has New York Times Best Selling Author across the cover even when they phoned it in. Having written reviews nonstop for over eight years, I can attest to the fact that at times it is an effort to put anything down -- or to have to read one more thriller with the same tired plot and set up or a romance that isn't much of a romance or a literary novel that takes fifty pages to say a character now lives on the other side of the country and is working as manager of a sporting good store since he got out of prison. I get introspection and navel gazing, but no one can gaze that far into a navel that is too shallow to collect lint, especially when lint collects everywhere and anywhere.
At least I'll have something different to do for a while since I signed up to recap Mike & Molly. Now that is pleasurable and something new and I have Christy to thank for that one. She told me Mike & Molly was about a plus size couple finding love together. That was moderately interesting, even though James Coco did a similar sitcom a few decades ago, but what really got me was the public outcry by a blogger who was disgusted by seeing an overweight couple hugging, kissing, and loving each other. I probably wouldn't have checked it out as quickly or been as interested. Give me a good story and some laughs, but to really hook my interest you'd better give me controversy. It was also nice to see that the actress who plays Molly won an Emmy. Now that is progress since she does not fit the starvation ravaged figure that the rest of the females up for awards sported. That's a topic for another time.
Right now, I'm sniffling, sneezing, and wiping my nose while enjoying that rain-kissed breeze coming through the window. Time to tuck in the tootsies and find a good book to read, one that I am not contracted to review and don't have to finish if it turns out to be a dud.
Tuesday, October 04, 2011
Monday, October 03, 2011
Whizzing deadlines and holiday cards
It's that time of the year to pick out holiday cards for my grandchildren and a few friends. Ghosts, ghouls, goblins, and skeletons dance about in paper, felt, and other materials, delighting and filling me with the holiday spirit. Halloween cards are followed by Thanksgiving cards -- I like to be prepared and hate waiting until the last moment, except for writing deadlines.
Missing or extending writing deadlines never kept me in the church restroom when I arrived late for Sunday school. As a character once said, I love the sound of deadlines as they go whizzing by." I don't really like the whizzing sound, but it sounds good as long as I don't miss them for real. I'm always in that church restroom with my feet up against the wall so no one knows I was late for Sunday school -- or deadlines. Then again, I was writing about holiday cards.
The Thanksgiving cards are pretty unamazing decorated with wreaths in fall colors, turkeys, cornucopiae, food, and trimmings that all remind me of autumn harvest festivals. I found seven cards just right for sending, cards that will likely end up in a dusty box or in the garbage or pasted in a forgotten scrapbook that seemed like such a good idea when it was started. The cards are mostly for the grandchildren and I hope for at least a moment or two they enjoy the sentiment and think of me.
This is the busiest time of year. There are cards to buy, address, and send for four holidays, food to plan and make and eat, and the bustle and tussle of holiday presents to plan and buy and send. The rest of the year is fairly quiet, unless you count writing, editing, and publishing books, in which case there is no real slow time of the year. I'll bet that is why the months flash by like weeks and weeks flash by in a matter of hours.
There was a point to this post when I began and then it got lost among the gathering detritus of holiday planning and buying and sending and knowing that there is still a lot more to do right here and right now with four book reviews to get written, correspondence to catch up on, and writing of other works to do. Just for a moment it was pleasant to think of cool, crisp autumn days and frosty mornings, spices and herbs swirling through the house on a cloud of warmth and deliciousness, and the thougth of soft snow drifting and swirling down to turn the world into a faery land of dreams and possibilities. Other than that, there really is no point, except to say happy holidays, whichever ones you choose to celebrate.
Missing or extending writing deadlines never kept me in the church restroom when I arrived late for Sunday school. As a character once said, I love the sound of deadlines as they go whizzing by." I don't really like the whizzing sound, but it sounds good as long as I don't miss them for real. I'm always in that church restroom with my feet up against the wall so no one knows I was late for Sunday school -- or deadlines. Then again, I was writing about holiday cards.
The Thanksgiving cards are pretty unamazing decorated with wreaths in fall colors, turkeys, cornucopiae, food, and trimmings that all remind me of autumn harvest festivals. I found seven cards just right for sending, cards that will likely end up in a dusty box or in the garbage or pasted in a forgotten scrapbook that seemed like such a good idea when it was started. The cards are mostly for the grandchildren and I hope for at least a moment or two they enjoy the sentiment and think of me.
This is the busiest time of year. There are cards to buy, address, and send for four holidays, food to plan and make and eat, and the bustle and tussle of holiday presents to plan and buy and send. The rest of the year is fairly quiet, unless you count writing, editing, and publishing books, in which case there is no real slow time of the year. I'll bet that is why the months flash by like weeks and weeks flash by in a matter of hours.
There was a point to this post when I began and then it got lost among the gathering detritus of holiday planning and buying and sending and knowing that there is still a lot more to do right here and right now with four book reviews to get written, correspondence to catch up on, and writing of other works to do. Just for a moment it was pleasant to think of cool, crisp autumn days and frosty mornings, spices and herbs swirling through the house on a cloud of warmth and deliciousness, and the thougth of soft snow drifting and swirling down to turn the world into a faery land of dreams and possibilities. Other than that, there really is no point, except to say happy holidays, whichever ones you choose to celebrate.
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