I’m blogging at Nobody Writes it Better today about the dreaded Great Photo Album Update and my love of photography. Please join me and share your thoughts and experiences.
Category: This & That
Birdbrain
Ever had a bird in the house? Ever wondered how it got in? Ever considered that it might not be via the cat?
My family has lived in our current home for nineteen years. Sure, we’ve had birds in the house before, courtesy of cats, but those are easy to spot because they’re usually wounded. In fact, our first cat, Slink, once brought a baby owl (dead and frozen before he got to it) into a house we rented in a town about three hours drive from where we currently live. Our second cat, Seiki (a nasty, toothless Siamese I immortalized in BORROWING ALEX as Rusty), considered himself quite the Great White Hunter (one of his nicknames). He’d bring maimed birds into the house and then get much joy from watching them flap about trying to get away from him. Lucky for those birds, the family was usually on the ball and saved the bird before Seiki could further torment it. I can’t recall one single bird becoming the cat’s dinner.
Now, we’re on our third cat, Keisha. Otherwise known around the blog as The Evil Entity. She’s not actually evil. She is quite sweet. Behold, evidence:
Come on, admit it. She’s cute!
So, The Evil Entity has a cat door. Our cats have always had cat doors. I grew up with a cat jumping on my window screen in the middle of the night to get in the house. Not fun. Thus, the cat door. It’s accessible from the carport.
Last winter we had to close the cat door for several months, because, sweet as she is, The Evil Entity wasn’t guarding it very well. A big black cat in the neighborhood decided that sneaking into our house in the middle of the night to eat Keisha’s cat food was a fine idea.
Jump to the summer. We decided to open the cat door again. The big black cat seems to have forgotten about it. Good news. The bad news? We have a birdbrain!
Last weekend, while My Liege was busy helping Eldest Son put away his car for the winter, the kitchen door was left open. My Liege was walking by the cat door in the carport and noticed Keisha inspecting said cat door. He realized something was inside the house, pushing back on the cat door, but not strong enough to get out. Keisha wanted to get in, but was unnerved by the pushing on the door.
So. My Liege goes downstairs, and there’s a huge bird—quite healthy, totally unmaimed by a cat—pushing against the cat door in a vain effort to get out. M.L. and E.S. managed to get the bird to fly back out again (after removing a screen from a basement window), but not before the bird tried to dive-bomb E.S. 
What, did he think we were casting for a remake of The Birds?
Okay, bird leaves the house, The Evil Entity, Not Very Evil, can now enter the house again. Everyone is happy. How did the bird enter the house, we wondered? I theorized that E.E. pushed it in through the cat door, but M.L. and E.S. maintained the bird was far too large for E.E. to catch, much less push through a cat door.
All right, I conceded, I guess the bird flew in through the open kitchen door and just happened to fly into the workshop and decide to try to get out again via a cat door.
Meanwhile, My Liege had moved a bunch of freshly chopped kindling into the carport beside the cat door, but no one, not even moi, considered that this wood might have had something to do with the birdbrained bird entering our house.
So. The other day, I take Allie McBeagle outside for a bathroom break. We pass the carport. A huge bird that at this point lives in my imagination as part crow/part magpie because I didn’t get a good look as a result of lowering my head so it wouldn’t Hitchcock me, swept up from near the cat door, wings fluttering madly, and attempted to dive-bomb my head before I screamed and scared it off. The Evil Entity was sitting at the other end of the carport, watching with interest.
That dagnabbed bird, I swear, was trying to get into our house via the cat door. What a birdbrain.
Why would it do such a thing? My guess is that it can smell the freshly cut kindling (can birds smell?), and, look, there’s an opening right next to this nice-smelling wood. Surely, the wood must be a weird tree and the opening a nice door for a bird house.
Except it’s my house, birdbrain! Get the heck out!
Tall Tales
“Truth is stranger than fiction.”
I don’t know who said that, but is it ever true! Sometimes the lives of my extended family and friends seem like something out of fiction. How about you?
On Sunday, My Liege, Eldest Son and I left Youngest Son alone for a few days while we transported E.S. to university. Y.S. had just bought a kayak, and I knew he planned to go out on the lake while we were gone. Thank God my BFF had lent him a good life jacket for the month of September….
M.L., E.S. and I hadn’t driven further than the next town when a storm blew up…just when Y.S. was supposed to be on the lake. We stopped to have lunch with a friend, and I called home to tell Y.S. to phone me to let me know he was still alive.
He was still alive. But what a hair-raising tale! He doesn’t have a skirt for the kayak yet, and the waves got choppy so the kayak began to take on water. He made it to the beach and realized he should head back home. On the way home, he capsized, losing his cell phone and his I-Pod (don’t ask me why he took either out on the lake). His shed half his clothes to make swimming easier, and by the grace of A Higher Being, he managed to rescue his kayak and himself.
It took him three tries to find a family that would help him. The first two wouldn’t give him the time of day. Okay, he was down to his skivvies, but all he wanted was a towel. He’s obviously still a teenager, wears a gold cross around his neck, the lake was very choppy by this point, and the kayak was sitting on the shore. Nope, no one had a towel to lend him.
Finally, the third family, who barely spoke a word of English, took him in. They let him have a short shower, lent him a change of clothes, gave him a cup of coffee and a snack, and let him use their phone to call the father of a friend to drive him home.
Do you believe me? Or is this a tall tale?
Meanwhile, My Liege, Eldest Son and I made it to E.S.’s university town without incident. E.S. has been struggling for a few weeks now to receive back his deposit on the room he intended to rent in a private home. Supposedly that room had suffered damage in a fire. Among other things he was told that the landlady had (a) lost her cell phone (b) had suffered a minor nervous breakdown and was under a doctor’s care (c) wasn’t answering her home phone and might not even be there. Some of these stories came by way of an email from her, others from her supposed “very good friend,” who we now suspect was also her. Promises about the money coming “in 24 hours.” Promises that were never kept.
So. We go to her house. She’s not home. We talk to the downstairs tenant. The fire wasn’t confirmed or disapproved, but neither M.L. nor E.S. could see evidence of it. We left and moved E.S. into his new digs. Before going out to dinner, we returned to Evil Landlady’s house. I stayed in the truck (I tend to have too much compassion for people, even when they’re behaving in a despicable manner). M.L. and E.S. surprised Evil Landlady on her sundeck. She maintained she didn’t have the money and said she’d sent E.S. an email that day. Later, reading the email, E.S. reported that she’d claimed she’d moved to another city—a ferry ride and a drive away!
My son and husband said they would not leave until my son received back his deposit. What do you think—did he receive it back?
What’s his next step? Is she dumb enough to believe he won’t take it?
School Daze
School starts late this year in my neck of the woods. It doesn’t even start today. Nope, the first day is tomorrow. It used to start today. By that I mean the day following Labor Day was always the first day of school, as far back as I can remember (ie. when I was in school). However, when Youngest Son was in grade 11 or grade 12, I think it was, the day after Labor Day became a Pro-Development day with school now starting the day after. This year, with school starting on the 9th, is the latest I can remember.
While I no longer have kids in school, I still have one in university. Eldest Son. He begins his last year of his B.A. tomorrow. Youngest Son is taking a year off. He survived a challenging full slate of first year sciences this last year followed by an intense three-course summer session. Next year, the plan is he’ll enrol in university in another province, but for now his brain needs a break.
It’s kind of strange not to have both my kids enrolled in some form of education. Honestly, I feel Y.S. is cheating me out of harassing him about his studies. I can’t hassle E.S., because he’s away for the year and he has it too together, anyway. Not that Y.S. doesn’t have it together, mind you. He definitely does, just in a different way.
When does school start in your part of the world? Are your kids just going back, or have they been attending for weeks? I can not fathom kids in my area of B.C. attending school in August. It’s our hottest month. To me, September = Start of School. However, I guess when you live in an area where it’s always 80 Fahrenheit or higher, it doesn’t matter when school starts, they’re gonna roast regardless.
Of Note
I’m feeling tons better, and life is slowly getting back under control. So, ta-da, one blog post before the weekend. Watch, now no one will comment because I said I wouldn’t be here again until next week.
Not getting any writing done, but on Monday I had a 90-minute long Skype brainstorming session with a former critique partner, and now I have a ton of excellent revision notes for SEX, PIs & PACKING TAPE. Really looking forward to solidifying my approach to the revisions and digging into that book again. Will pass the notes by a writing friend who critiqued the full first, though. I have another manuscript I can work on in the meantime.
Guess what? I’ve already received, signed and mailed back the hard copy of the contract for the HEAD OVER HEELS manga rights. When I approved the contract via email (last week) and my contact in the Tuttle-Mori contracts department said I would receive the hard copy contract soon, she wasn’t fooling. I don’t think I’ve ever received a contract that quickly.
Also, I find it interesting that this contract was the easiest to understand and read of any I’ve ever purused for either myself or Penny. In other words, the easiest to read and understand contract from any North American publisher with whom I’ve dealt. The legalities are all in place, but not in a “foreign language,” to speak. They’re written in plain English. What a switch!
Bad Things
I’m taking a break from blogging this week. The universe decided to dump all over my family over the last few days, and I don’t have the wherewithal to draft posts. First, a member of My Liege’s immediate family was rushed to hospital for the second time in a week in very serious condition. She spent the weekend in the ICU, and although she’s back at home now the details of her condition remain a mystery. We hope to find out more by the end of the month.
The day after that happened, we learned a lightning strike had created a fire on our woodlot. My Liege had to deal with that (the fire’s contained now, as far as we know). No idea of the damage to the timber.
The same day, we finally got our new stove, only to discover an 18-inch long gouge in the side. Back to the store it went, and we’re waiting for another.
We thought that was Bad Thing #3, and we couldn’t possibly receive any more grungy news.
Pitiful humans. A gouge in a stove doesn’t even count as a Bad Thing, it appears.
Yesterday, just as Eldest Son was leaving on a four-day camping trip without cell access, we learned that the room in the private home he was to move into in two weeks for his last year at university was damaged in a fire that occurred while the owner was on vacation. The repairs won’t be finished until October, which leaves him a month without a place to live. We have fantastic friends in his university town, and they offered to let him stay with them while repairs were underway. But I’ve been in that position before—staying in one home for September before moving into the “permanent” spot in October, and it’s not the best situation in the world. It’s hard to dig into your studies when you don’t feel settled.
So…yesterday, I quickly gathered information for the remaining available housing. He and I went through them, and our friend in the university town checked out the only two of the seven or so that responded. The good news is Eldest Son has a new place to live, not quite as private as his former situation, but cheaper, so he’ll be happy when he comes home and learns that’s settled.
Then last night I awoke in the early hours of the morning with the worst sinus headache I’ve had in years. I’m still battling it.
Today is Youngest Son’s 19th birthday! That’s the best news I’ve heard all week. I’m doing nothing more strenuous than baking him a cake, reading, relaxing, walking the dog, fighting this cold, and maybe going over some notes for a manuscript revision that, at this point, I don’t even remember brainstorming with a writing friend yesterday afternoon over Skype. Good thing I was typing while she talked!
Tuesday, September 1st, romantic suspense author Kylie Brant is guest-blogging. Her promo post will go up on Monday. Unless I feel markedly better between now and Friday, that’s the next time you’ll hear from me. The universe had taken this round. I know when I’m beat. 🙂