Writer In Progress

For those who don't recognize the name; a pangolin is an animal. Looks like an anteater got frisky with an artichoke and this is the offspring :) Our ceramics project which we began last night is to sculpt an animal. The students who have had this professor before say this will be the single most anal, detail obsessed project of my life. Ha! They don't know about writers do they?
We had to choose an animal to do...and that was the hardest part for me. So MANY wonderful animals in this amazing world and I wanted to do them all! Thankfully the other students 'took' a few of my choices: platypus, octopus, okapi. That left me really with just a tarsier or the pangolin. I couldn't decide so I just grabbed my 20 lb block of white clay, threw it on the board and told it to choose. It decided on the pangolin.
Of course.
Requires lots more overall detail work.
It will be fun though.
PLUS we are still working on our first coil pots which we just began in our previous class. I am going to be spending some free hours in the ceramics lab, I can tell.

...what the HECK is wrong when doctors no longer listen to or even acknowledge that sometimes a parent might know MORE about that child they are seeing than what they 'see'.

Amy (age 7) was sent home yesterday because she had such a severe headache she was crying and she was lethargic and, as you can well imagine, miserable. Amy does not normally have headaches of any kind, but it is flu and sinus season. She was picked up, and arrived home with tears streaming down her little face because her head hurt soooooo bad. She had a low grade temp, and her glands were swollen, so we gave her ibuprofen and put her to bed.

As the afternoon progressed we noted that she was unable to STAY awake, did not want to eat or drink or do anything, her temp continued to rise and we could hold it around 100 but she had the shakes so bad she couldn't even hold the medicine spoon. And her headache continued unremitting. Soon she was complaining the pain was in her neck as well as head, and she couldn't bend her head forward, although she could still look left and right. She would have tears, but when we asked why she was crying she could only say she didn't know. Soon we noticed she cculdn't even focus for more than a moment if we were right in front of her, and her left eye was 'wandering' (Amy does not have a lazy eye, normally).

That was it for us. Packed up Amy to the hospital ER. Three hours later (and with no substantive testing of any sort!) they sent her home. They said she 'just has a bad headache'. Excuse me? A headache doesn't give a child a fever. We insisted WE know this child and her behavior, and her symptoms tell US something is much more 'wrong' than 'just a bad headache'! Not saying the medical people were/are wrong. But it seems to me that they at least need to LISTEN to what the people who know the child are telling them. If we 'feel' something isn't "right" with our child...chances are something ISN'T right.
I am not a panicky mom-type-person. My kids rarely need to go to the doctor, and even emergencies are handled without much fanfare. We don't run for antibiotics at every sniffle, they play outside in all kinds of weather, and yes, they get wet and dirty and cold. Goes with being a kid, and I think, as a rule, homegrown resistance keeps kids healthier in the long run.
But I have a lot of kids...and I know a sick kid when I see one.

If the emergency personnel want me to respect their diagnosis...shouldn't they respect my experience and knowledge of my kids as well?

Just sayin'. Some people need a wake up call in the seat of their pants!

PS...obviously, no writing happened yesterday. Sometimes real life wins the battle for my attention.

Chapter 58 was completed last night! Still rolling!
Hoping to get into 59 tonight after ceramics class. Need to resolve a question I have over the previous chapter and the order of the two final scenes. It is possible reversing them might add more tension at the end.
And I dooooo love tension.

But changing them would also alter the opening of THIS chapter...so it bears some consideration.

One last sunny day today, changing to rain tonight and snow tomorrow. Well, it was glorious while it lasted.

Bought my ceramics tools for class tonight, can't wait to try them out! Also got 50 pounds of clay at the college bookstore. Which I THEN had to lug across the campus to my car parked out in the back forty, LOL! Whew! Need 50 more...maybe next week?

Have a wonderful day!

Wow! We are having such gorgeous weather! Hard to believe it is January!
I will gladly take every precious moment of sunshine and above freezing temps...there are still many long, cold, grey days ahead.

Finished signing up for all my spring semester classes. A couple look 'tricky' (religion leaps to mind!) and a couple are pure joy (ceramics). An odd schedule since I left out a lot of courses I might have taken, but couldn't afford to miss a week when Ashley and I made the 'auditions' run down the East Coast in February.

Finished Chapter 57 this week. The goal is a chapter every week to ten days (wiggle room allowed for the first week of school or test weeks) till this book is completed.
Chapters are getting, for lack of a better term...please feel free to offer one!...jumpier.
Instead of a long stretch in a single pov I have shorter scenes moving from one character to another. It feels like a 'drawing together' of all these primary characters and their threads.

Appropriate, I think, as we lurch toward the end :)

Meanwhile, Aedin managed to knock off three of my laptop keyboard keys with his shoe then knocked two more off last night. Soon I shall be keyless, ha. Good thing I don't need to look to type or I would be in real trouble!

Hang in there, friends...Spring IS coming. (Jen, remind me of this in about a month:)

Church this morning, a lovely service reminding us of the Christ in Christmas.
Our tiny little orphan tree looks lovely and everyone had a great time opening gifts. Sure looked 'naked' under there without the oversize kiddie items. Everyone is growing up. Electronics and clothes and gift cards replace doll houses, building sets, and bikes.

Made a big ol' turkey and lots of fun sides. Just a lovely day.
Hope your day was blessed with health, happiness, and plenty.

Merry Christmas

Celebrating the passage of the longest night of winter and the beginning of the renewal of days. Each day is longer now. Winter cannot last forever (it just seems that way, ha).
Hoping once we pass Christmas I will be able to concentrate just long enough to finish this chapter and move into the final section of the story.

This should be fun.

Merry Christmas all.

Love ya bunches

This has been some week weather-wise! My goodness the storms! Exciting. Scary, for some folks, I am sure. The kids and I enjoyed the ride although this latest one drove everyone except me into the basement...just in case.

The big dog started acting nervous and restless a good fifteen minutes before the severe storm alarms all went off. I listen to the critters when they say something bad is coming. Mostly we have rain. Every day. 42 of the last 50 days...and I think more than that out here, ha.

On the writing front...I have encountered a logic hole that requires 'filling' before I go too much further. Fortunately I love world building and once I can get a handle on how this works things should be able to progress fairly seamlessly.

Still plenty to do, articles to edit, workshops to give. And college. And kids.

Life is good.

...and headed toward another (overwrought) weekend of fun with the family.

Managed to get the dogs both bathed this morning before the rains rolled back in. Supposed to be some HUGE thunderstorms tonight. The dogs smell much better, thank you.

Once I collect all the kiddos from school (between 2 and 3:30) I need to make a run to the nursery for a sale on patio tomatoes and pepper plants. Then stop at the corner Asian market for jasmine rice (40 lbs should hold us another 4 months), curry paste for supper tonight, coconut cream and whatever other goodies catch my imagination.

Perhaps of more importance...or interest...is that I have conquered the 'hump' in this chapter and Khyr is happily headed toward the next chapter where my story really gets down to business. Which also means I can now head back to the END of the book and maybe finish this story yet.

Happy, happy!

My dd discovered this afternoon that I have spent this week happily rewriting an early chapter in Khyr's story. The first version went AWOL when my laptop crashed and burned (and my flash that was to save me from such horror vanished without a trace. So I took the rough draft, slashed and hacked, and have very nearly completed a whole "new" (and I must say, I think much better) version.

Her issue? I am working on the 'front part' of the book when she wants me to devote myself to the 'end'.

Ordinarily I agree with her. "Just write it to the end, stupid, and then edit" has been my mantra. BUT (you knew there would be a but, right?) in this instance, without these earlier chapters, even when I reach 'the end' it won't be done. And the changes, however subtle, of rewriting chapters first written a couple of years ago make a small but very significant change to the story and to the relationship between my heroes. I think I need this chapter completed before I dive back into the last couple of chapters remaining to be written.

But maybe she is right. She often is.

Tonight I finish this chapter. Tomorrow? Back to work on finishing the last of the story?

Either way...Khyr makes the journey memorable.

Gorgeous day on the Northcoast. Sunshine, blue skies, birds singing. Since there was no one home but me and the toddler-terrorist I thought I could subdue his inner beast with a nice walk. A mile+ to the grocery store, get him a donut, pick up sugar (I ran out of ice tea! PANIC), then walk back, stopping at AJ and Amy's elementary school for the mile walk home.

Lovely walk. I burned some calories jogging with the stroller, he yelled and talked to all the squirrels, flowers, and dogs. Reached the school just as the first few clouds rolled in. Fifteen minutes later we leave with Amy and AJ as a few fat raindrops patter to the ground.

Better walk a little faster.

The crossing guard lets us across the street. And the sky falls as heaven sprung a leak.

POURING rain! Heavy, hard, so hard we could barely see! Wait! The rain is BOUNCING on the ground. Great...hail! Nice marble size hail. The kids and I had rain running in our eyes, dripping off our noses, as we chased big hailstones and splashed through huge puddles.

It was a wonderful walk home. These are the best kinda days. May you be so blessed.