The Portland Timbers are dismantling my heart piece by piece from the inside out. This is starting to remind me of all the times I was madly in love with someone who was completely wrong for me but I wasn’t about to give up as long as there was a tiny bit of hope. I’m still going to stand by my men because that’s the kind of girl I am, but I wish I could spend the day on the couch finishing my wine cube and eating a bucket of cookie dough and watching Sense & Sensibility and The Lake House.
I have picked so many giant snails out of my front yard, I’m starting to fear going out there. Normally I just pick the ones I find in the process of my regular gardening. On Sunday it was drizzling which is perfect snail picking weather, if you didn’t know, and I got my bucket and went to town. I stuck my gloved hands into corners and moved rocks and dug around in bushes.
And I kept finding more and more and more snails. Big giant ones. On the lawn. In the future pumpkin patch area. Around the porch. By the window. It started freaking me out. Where are all these snails coming from?
I don’t know anything about snail biology and I don’t want to but I found two on the tree that were all tangled up and apparently getting it on. Can’t they do that in someone else’s yard?
And of course I read too many Stephen King stories when I was a kid and in the back of my mind I can’t help but worry what will become of me if the snails take over the world.
I came home the other night and spotted a rose in my neighbor’s yard. I was about to start whining about my roses and I noticed this.
Remember when I broke a wheel on my office chair?
I broke another one. I’m not really sure what I’m doing that’s so rough on the chairs. I just sit there and deal with documents.
I *did* eat a lot of brownies this week.
And this.
I have an awesome dentist and I’m pretty relaxed about the dentist anyway. I had an appointment this week that left me a tad traumatized.
There’s one corner of my mouth that doesn’t seem to numb totally or else it wears off super fast. My sister said she has a similar problem. I’m not sure what’s going on there but I mentioned this to the dentist and she said, “Oh yeah?” And then broke out some more stuff. And usually I just deal since the drilling doesn’t last forever but she asked me to let her know. So we stopped again in the middle and dosed me some more. It didn’t take long but I was glad when it was over.
Then I was so lightheaded I was afraid to stand up. That’s never happened before but I’ve never had brontosaurus novocaine before, either. Also, I didn’t eat before my appointment and I got busted. Eat before your dentist treatments! I took my time walking back to the office and I got a chai (sugar! fat!) and felt normal by the time I finished it.
I had the worst dream last night – I was visiting with friends and Maggie and Christopher and they left with all my stuff in their car: my purse, wallet, phone, keys. Actually, it was a motorcycle. Because of the fact situation of the dream there was no way to solve this problem so I decided I had to walk to their house.
“How far away is it?”
“Seventy miles.”
“Okay, can I borrow some shoes?”
Someone gave me vans and stockings.
I woke up completely panicked and it took forever to get back to sleep. Then I had to tell Bob all about it this morning. “All my phone numbers are in my phone. I didn’t have any money. There was nothing I could do.” Meanwhile Bob was cracking up: “A Pam control dream.”
I needed a few cups of tea and some fruit and granola before I could function again.
I’m never going to let that happen.
I thought I killed my sourdough. After years of taking care of it, it got wedged in the back of the fridge and I neglected it. When I finally took it out it had a weird chemical smell and I dumped it.
Later I found out it was fine and with a couple of good feedings it would be good as new. Or good as old. You only have to throw it out if it gets mold or weird stuff growing in it.
When I was in California in February Auntie gave me some more starter and I fed it this weekend. I decided to bake a loaf of bread. I’ve done this a lot. I use the regular no-knead recipe and throw in a dollop of sourdough.
This time my sourdough feeding was more liquidy than I usually do. I fed the sourdough in my bread mixing bowl and I was too lazy to wash it. Honestly it occurred to me that this was a terrible idea as I was doing it but I did it anyway. I just scraped out most of the sourdough for the fridge and made the bread in the bowl with the remaining sourdough.
Within a few hours I had a bowl filled with bubbling “dough.” I left it overnight and in the morning tried to shape my loaf with what was actually a wonderful sourdough batter. When I took that baking class the teacher managed to make a loaf with really wet dough so I thought I could do it. But mostly I just swirled sticky batter all over my kitchen counter until I got mad and scraped it into the trash.
I’m sure when we get home tonight it will have taken over the trash can.
I’ve been talking about this forever, but FINALLY! My story collection is out into the world and available for eReaders.
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It’s called: Red Tape Stories from Indian Country.
It’s a collection of nine speculative fiction stories including three that were already published. All the stories have some connection to the people and lands of the Karuk Tribe.
Here’s the Table of Contents and a little bit about the stories.
The Battle of Little Big Science
(previously appeared in Asimov’s Science Fiction) This was my Clarion West week #3 story.
Estelle Makes the Casino Run
(previously appeared in Innsmouth Free Press) I wrote this for a contest with my Clarion West classmates.
Social Security
(previously appeared in The Wordstock Ten) This was my submission story for Clarion West.
Field Work
This was my Clarion West week #2 story. Are you seeing a theme here?
The Medicine Woman of Talking Rock
Yup, Clarion West Week #5.
Repercussions
Clarion West Week #6. This was me trying to do something different since you’re supposed to stretch yourself at the workshop.
Trusted Leader
This was my Week #7 story – the first thing I wrote after I left the workshop. The process was gruesome but I like the way it came out after about 5000 drafts.
Fish Killer
This story has nothing to do with Clarion West. I was upset about the dredge mining situation on the Klamath and needed to work it out.
The Casino Gargoyle
This was another submission story I wrote when I misunderstood the application instructions.
All of this can be yours with just a few clicks.
It’s available for Kindle at Amazon or in all other formats at Smashwords.
Special thanks goes to my Clarion West class and instructors. Also giant tower of thank you pies to Douglas Lucas for help with finalizing the manuscript and Eden Robins for the title. (Note to Douglas and Eden, that tower of thank you pies is a figure of speech. Don’t expect an actual tower of pies.)
We have a dorm fridge at the office. We keep a few Cokes and ginger ales in there. I drink maybe one a month. Co-worker probably fewer than that. It’s nice to have if you want one and if we have guests we have something to offer.
Not too long ago co-worker restocked the Coke and it seems like just a few weeks later it was down to one.
One thing I’ve noticed as I’ve gotten older is that I have little concept of the passage of time. Sometimes I’ll think of something as brand new and then realize we’ve had it for 3 years.
This week I mentioned to co-worker that we had only one Coke and maybe bring more in. I asked if he drinks Coke when I’m not around because I can’t remember the last time I saw him with one.
He said he thought I drank it all.
At first we thought the cleaning people must be drinking them but it didn’t make sense because if they were going to pilfer sodas, there are probably larger offices where it wouldn’t be so obvious. Plus they would be easy to bust and seems like a stupid way to lose your job.
Now we think maybe it was from when we had a group working on a project in the office and we just lost track.
Keep in mind we aren’t upset about this it was just funny that we both thought it was the other one.
I thought this story would be a lot more interesting when I started typing it but no time to come up with something better. I got to get this day started.
For a long time I clipped almost every brownie recipe I found. I was always on the lookout for a best recipe. I had the idea in my head that there was a giant range in brownie quality and if I was diligent enough, I would find the magical life-transforming recipe of brownie goodness.
Meanwhile I had a gooiest recipe, a most chocolately recipe, Katherine Heburn’s recipe, Test Kitchen Best Recipe, giant brownie bake-off winning recipes.
At one point I probably had at least a dozen recipes in my clippings, most of which I had never tried.
I finally went through and threw a bunch away because, I don’t make brownies that often (So why was I on the lookout for a life-transforming recipe? It’s a mystery.) and when I do I usually use this recipe (Thank you Keetha) which is always a big hit or else Mark Bittman’s.
A couple of weeks ago I noticed that we had somehow accumulated 3 jars of Nutella and much as we love Nutella, it would take us awhile to work through 3 jars. So I got this brilliant idea to look for a Nutella brownie recipe.
I found this one which looks very simple and I was concerned it might turn out mediocre brownies but what the hell, just some butter and sugar and no shortage of Nutella.
They were amazing. They were so amazing I ate THREE! the night I made them and didn’t feel well when I went to bed.
My conclusion is that it’s pretty tough to bake a crappy brownie unless you make a mistake.
These are the tomato seedlings. I saved a blob of seeds last year and they’ve been sitting on the windowsill, looking like something we were too lazy to throw away, on a wadded up paper towel. I split them in half and planted the two blobs. A couple dozen sproutlets came up. I thinned them out. I need to get it to one per pot.
I finally flipped my closet over the weekend. I put the winter stuff away and pulled the lighter stuff from the back. I thought I needed more clothes. I was dreading having to buy any.
When the lotto was up to $300M or whatever I was thinking if I had money like that I’d hire people to bring me clothes. I would love to have new stuff I just don’t want to deal with having to out and get it myself.
I ended up finding a bunch of clothes I’d forgotten about that I put away last year. I probably could use a couple of tops and I might get a new pair of sandals because there’s a shoe store I like near the office.
Really what I need is winter clothes. There was a point in March where I was wearing my same warm outfits over and over. I can’t find good warm pants. I found an online store that had some that looked okay but when I looked at the reviews all the people who loved them were ladies 55-65. That didn’t sound promising.
But I don’t have to worry about it until October. Maybe then I’ll be in the mood for shopping.
So what’s the etiquette on talking about how people smell?
I’m sensitive to smells meaning that I notice them a lot, good or bad. And I tend to be one to blurt out, “Something smells good,” just about any time. I’m more reserved about bad smells, sometimes.
Recently the UPS man came to the office, and he smelled terrific.
I didn’t say anything because I was afraid it would be weird. But he was like Scatman Crothers and he called me ‘Sweetheart’ so I don’t think he would have minded. We have 2 UPS men at the office. One of them never smiles, even when I make a joke. I would not say anything about smells around him.
News about the self-published eBook is coming shortly. I still need to get a few things checked out and then I want to set it up so you can get it for free for a few days. But it is all done and in the chute and *almost* ready for prime time.
Stay tuned.
