Writing Interruption

I've actually been writing, hooray!!

But have you ever been typing away when all of a sudden the actual act of typing jolts you out of the flow of what you were writing? I mean, some words are just so darned fun to type that I suddenly become aware of the mechanics of typing them.

This happens to me most often with words typed entirely by one hand. These are my faves:

address
opinion
areas
minion
million
recess
excess
access
hilly
lily
wave
were

And just plain fun to type: committee. In fact, I usually end up putting two “i’s” in there because I get carried away.

Apparently I'm easily distracted.

Found any faves yourself??

Great Reading to Keep You Out of the Cold

Looking for some good reading and a great excuse to curl up and stay warm in today's -30C temperatures? I am. Check out the Children's & Young Adult Bloggers' Literary Awards, now in its third year.

The Cybils shortlist of finalists at
http://dadtalk.typepad.com/cybils/2009/01/the-2008-cybils-finalists.html
will keep you busy with quality reading for a long time.

Congrats to all finalists, from me, one of last year’s finalists.

Stinky Situation Solved

At least one of the grumbles from the other day has been solved. But it’s a bit embarrassing how it all turned out. That stinky melting plastic-y smell coming from my car? I couldn’t stand it anymore. Envisioning my car catching fire while I was in the middle of nowhere among other disastrous causes/effects was driving me crazy. Only using the heater at half capacity in an attempt to avoid the smell was (a.) freezing me to death and (b.) not working. So I broke down and took the car into the garage to find the source of the stink.

Turns out a lousy plastic grocery bag had become stuck to the catalytic converter (or whatever--some part underneath the car that gets hot, I am no expert on cars) and was melting on it so the fan was blowing the smell inside the car. I’d likely driven over the bag at some point.

More litter plaguing my life!

Yet another reason to hate those plastic bags!

Bet the garage guys got a good laugh at me.

A small bit of stink lingers, like my vague feeling that perhaps I should have discovered the root cause myself, but in my defense I am not in the habit of lying on the ground and crawling under my car.

The end result is that I am a little lighter in the wallet (groan) but also a little lighter in the worry department. Phew!

Happy New Year...No?

Happy belated New Year!

I have to confess that I'm having trouble with this new year. I normally find January 1st to be a day that makes me feel rather subdued and a little melancholy. No big deal. I take down the tree, the holiday decorations, and I make a big dinner. Our extended families live a fair drive away and don't usually visit; we've seen them over Christmas already anyway.

But here it is the 8th and I'm having a hard time getting back into the swing of things. I'm still subdued and melancholy. I'm grumpy and unenthused. I'm troubling, puzzling, worrying over a number of things, so maybe by committing them to words I can expel them from my brain, or at least push them aside, so I can get on with things.

In random order:

• I'm stalled over which of the various writing projects I have started I want to tackle seriously. This one? That one? That one's huge. That one's being difficult. This one might be stupid. I can't decide.

• My dishwasher is making an ominous rattling noise and the dripping leak in the corner is becoming a trickle.

• The economic news is all doom and gloom. In fact most of the news is grim. I try not to listen to it but it's hard to ignore. And I can't just become a cat lady and retire from the world...or at least not yet.

• My car is making an intermittent funny plastic melting type of smell. My daughter, spooked, ran from the car to the house yesterday the second I was parked. I had to agree with her impulse.
  

• My son was dealt a mental and emotional body blow days before Christmas by a minor hockey coach who doesn't appear to have a bone of compassion in him...and may be missing a brain too. (I didn't actually just write that down, did I?)

• Hubby's business computer crashed two days ago. Today it was diagnosed as being beyond resuscitation.

• I'm growing increasingly annoyed at having to put up with dialup internet, and each bill that asks me to sign up for e-billing makes me want to scream. Every ad or spot that says go to this website for complete details makes me crazy. Every store that asks if I want to be put on their e-newsletter list makes me want to hurl. The world is leaving me behind, and unless I want to cough up some serious cash to make use of the new portable cell based internet services or inferior satellite that's all I'm eligible for thank you very much (despite neighbours only a few hundred yards away both up and down the road being eligible for DSL--I am living in a black hole I tell you!!!).

• Almost every day is a bad hair day.

• Oh and of course there's the ever present spectre of snow. What ever happened to only getting a couple centimetres when it falls? Seems like every second day we're dumped with 10 to 15 more centimetres. I know, I know, I should just suck it up because at least I'm not freezing in -40C like they have been out west.

• Nobody is going to like what I'm cooking for dinner tonight. I can hear it now: "Eeew, yuck! I don't wanna eat that!!!"

See, nothing extremely disastrous. I might just be a big whiner. So there: I've whined...I've wasted more time... yeah.

On we go, I hope.

May 09
be kind
to all.

The Snow Spectre

The Snow Spectre is haunting me. I know because...

...I had to be winched out of the ditch in my driveway after driving off it in slippery snow

...the tow truck who winched me subsequently got stuck in my driveway because it broke through the hard packed base and became mired in the stuff

...my hubby had to be come-alonged (by a neighbour) out of the driveway ditch because it is highly probably that the tow truck company will have nothing to do with us ever again this winter

...the kids have had two snow days and so missed school

...the snow, weighing down tree branches, has caused the power to go off at least once almost every day (I am now a whiz at programming the clock on my microwave, stove, coffee maker, you name it)

And that's in the last two weeks. And the white stuff keeps falling!!

Yes, the spectre of snow looms large for me. I'll try not to grumble too much but I'd better not make any promises.

Finds in my Files and my Fridge

The Files Find
I was cleaning out some of my computer files and found an idea I'd jotted down for a magazine article. It still sounded interesting to me, so yay! I think I'll pursue that one again. It'll be fun to see what happens.

The Fridge Find
I was cleaning out the fridge and found some coleslaw. . . from Thanksgiving. . . Canadian Thanksgiving. . .October 13th.

Gack!

Seeing what happened there was NOT fun.

Peekaboo

I'm feeling rather blah and uninspired lately, so here's a cute photo I took earlier this fall.



Chipmunks are so cute, but can they ever scare the crap out of you when they scamper over the carpet of dry leaves. They sound much, much bigger!