This cat has some serious Jedi Mind tricks. Something compelled me to get up from the kitchen table and go to the front door. Alvin, the neighbour's cat, was staring through the glass, his beady little eyes rivetted on the bag of catfood. The food bowl in my cats' house was empty. He's a fixture here these days. Doesn't miss too many meals. My kid says his people don't feed him. He looks healthy enough to me. My other cats have accepted him as one of the family except Grendal. He doesn't like to share his mom. He'll get over it eventually. Not sure the husband will though.

My dad got his biopsy report back. He has Prostate Cancer. Mom said his Gleason Score was 7. That's all I know. They were going to remove his catheter but ended up putting it back in for another month. That's got to be uncomfortable. He is not seeking treatment. Gonna ride it out to the end however long that may be. Not a good year for my family. Rick dead of cancer in Feb. Dad's second bout with cancer in October. Here, the husband still worries over his skin cancer. It's a wonder Mom hasn't gone off the deep end. I guess I'll be going down there this weekend to help Mom catch up on things. She needs a break. She's been fighting with my half brother SpongeBob lately since he's not doing anything to help out around the place. They really need to kick him, his girlfriend, his wife (and her 17 sickly cats) and stepson to the curb. They better do it soon.

Last night my daughter asked me, "What if it rained chocolate?" I told her I'd be outside with the biggest bucket I could find. I further postulated that if chocolate did indeed rain down by the bucketsful then we would most likely be sick of it. It would become commonplace. She shrugged and took another nibble of her mini Krackel ® bar. It was a silly thought. Pure silliness without a hint of an inner critic.
I wonder what happens to people to make them one day start questioning the practicality of their thoughts. Maybe my daughter will ask a classmate the same question and they'll tell her it's stupid. I guess that's how it may start. It's a shame. As a writer-wannabe I'm always asking myself 'what if' questions trying to come up with a story idea. Most are shot down as "stupid" by my inner critic. Others hit the "it's been done" barricade. I'm sure many flutter at the edges of my brain like ghosts, just wisps of an amorphous thought, and evaporate before I can grab them. Like dreams that fall apart upon waking.
In less than two weeks NaNoWriMo will be in full swing. I should be working on an outline. I've got nothing. Maybe if I eat a bunch of these mini chocolate bars something will come to me...besides five extra pounds around my waistline.

I generally wear different "uniforms" for different jobs. When I'm working outside hacking a trail through the front yard or defoliating a garden bed, I wear my favourite slouchy jeans: men's Tony Hawk. Comfy, rugged, even filthy dirty they look good.
When I'm working in the house it's yoga pants and a tshirt and depending on the chore with which I'm currently occupied, an apron. I'm an apron girl. If I have to go out I'll throw on another pair of equally ratty jeans and my super comfy, red, Land's End mocs. Casual, all the way. Who am I trying to impress, right?
I think I need to change my writing uniform though. My brain sees the yoga pants and habitually starts moving around the house shifting things hither and thither. If I wear jeans I inevitably find myself hoiking weeds out of their homes in the front yard or garden. Apparently the uniform and the brain are deeply entrenched.
The jammies and the bathrobe are not cutting it either. How many mornings has my forehead mashed the keys of my trusty HP Laptop because my brain thought it should still be sleeping? Too numerous to count, I assure you.
Maybe if I treated the writing of my great american novel like an office job. To dress the part I could raid my career stash that fit roughly fifteen years ago, pre-baby. Pantyhose so tight my fingernails turn blue, bunions straining in impractical heels like Dr. David Banner getting ready to hulk-out, a pencil skirt that limits the movement of my legs so I can't even comfortably cross my legs without splitting a seam. Then I force my brain to come up with at least 2,000 legitimate, lucid, and relative to the storyline words before I can shuffle back from the computer, take a shallow breath, and hobble back to the bedroom for a quick change of uniform. Not a 400 item to-do list. Not 800 words of mediocre prose. Not 1,500 words of strained dialogue. 2,000 words of mind altering, life changing, thought provoking, eureka shouting, forehead slapping literature. Every day.
Maybe a nice pantsuit.

Why is it so damned difficult to sit down and write something? After three minutes of staring at a blank page I'm up tending to laundry, dusting, vacuuming or something else, anything else, that will take me away from the computer. What the hell? Yesterday I spent an hour farting around with the cultivator motor trying to figure out how in hell to get to the pull cord without a torx driver. I freshened the bedding in the chicken house. I hung the laundry out on the line. I brought the wool runner in and vacuumed the hell out of it. I made jello. I even tackled the humongous pile of newspaper clippings, magazines, and whatnot on the kitchen table. Anything to keep from writing.
So, why do I even bother? Because the story is there. The characters are real and they're getting older by the day. I can't help but cast a critical eye on the work though. It's hard. You'd think my house would be spotless. It's not. It's as jumbled and cluttered as my brain. My teacup is empty. Again. Just stepped away to let Smudge out and had to reassure Grendal that he was the prettiest cat. Tea is ready. Another five minutes gone. I need to make a good outline with the major points of the story highlighted. Then I have to figure out how to string the action together. Like beads. Big beads for big action. Smaller beads to bridge. Seed beads for the boring spacer bits. A nice silver clasp for the end. And hope that my story doesn't become a really ugly necklace.

Meet Winston Purcell. A little rough around the edges but an alright guy. His job is finding death. He's a cadaver dog handler. He's quiet, serious, a bit closed off. The aftermath of tragedy is a serious business. Of course he's haunted, what leading hero isn't? Everyone has something in their past that they need to accept and overcome. Win's no different. He used to be in Search and Rescue. He turned to cadaver dogs when he could no longer accept that sometimes rescue comes too late. The dead are already dead.
He and Vera worked Ground Zero until they were trapped for several hours in a collapse. Winston was banged up pretty badly. He bears a few scars, both physically and emotionally, from that event. After that they worked Fresh Kills for a few months. In 2005 Hurricane Katrina hammered New Orleans and Winston was called to assist in the recovery of victims from that terrible disaster.
He lives with his dog, Chuck, outside the small town of Ulysses, south of Richmond, VA.

November is coming up quickly and I don't have a solid story idea yet. I've been running 'what ifs' through my head for weeks now and coming up dry. I thought maybe a Dylan-centric novel that could possibly tie in with The Paradoxical Sleep, which was last year's NaNo novel. (Unfinished at 35K) Or maybe Jennifer Runyon, the female lead, could move on to a new adventure. Perhaps she and Winston go on to solve other murders with Chuck the incredible cadaver dog. What if they are called to an old house or hotel or whatever that is purported to be haunted and they are hired to find any human remains. Come up with the solution and work backwards to the crime. Maybe write a story with Dylan and his ability to see flashes of the future. Maybe he moves quite a bit so he doesn't get to know the people who die violently in his visions. Maybe he doesn't watch the news anymore because he's tired of seeing the aftermath of things he wished he could change. He got tired of being treated like a terrorist whenever he would try to stop the inevitable chain of events that came to him without warning.
It seems like each major player has pulled back from other people for different reasons. Winston because of the failed rescue attempt of a little girl. Jennifer because she lost her Marine boyfriend in Iraq. Dylan because death follows him.
I need to come up with a loose outline this time. Last year was way too chaotic for me. I've got three weeks to come up with an idea. The pressure!

Dad is back in the hospital. Has had MRI and CT scans. Will be going to surgery tomorrow for exploratory and biopsy. Dr says to expect bad news. No sugar coating that.

Ok. My ass is in the chair. Finally. 8:17 a.m. I've got a cup of tea in front of me. I've had my morning English Muffin and a single piece of candy corn. The kidlet is off to school. The dishwasher is running. I have a dozen eggs on the boil. The husband got a movie for me last night. Afterlife with Justin Long. He's such a cutie. It's a redbox rental so I need to watch it today and return it today. So, I guess I'm going out for a bit. I need to go by Lowes to get a pull cord for the Troybilt. It finally snapped while the husband was tilling the foundation bed at the front of the house. Have a few other errands as well. But that's neither here nor there. I need to get into the habit of writing everyday. For NaNoWriMo and beyond. So here goes:

A girl of thirteen or fourteen is sitting slumped in a chair. She is pale. People in lab coats are milling around her, woodenly performing their duties as if she was just another piece of equipment in the small room. Her head is covered in something like a swimmer's cap with multicolored dots. Each dot equipped with a docking port for electrodes. A middleaged woman with hair the color of tarnished brass is inserting a hypo into each dock, filling the cavity with a cold gel to ensure proper contact of electrode and scalp. The girl yawns sleepily. This was nothing new to her. Same crap, different day. Soon they would pull a rolling metal table in front of her that held a flat computer screen. The deep blue background would be replaced by a screensaver. Usually the geometric lines that bounced around the edges of the screen. Her eyes would be drawn to that, lazily tracking the movement. In her head she would pretend that a bell would toll with each collision. Sometimes she imagined she could manipulate the shape to play a song in her head.
The brassy haired lab tech reached behind the girl and pulled a wig of wires up over her head. This was snapped in place and each wire was secured in each receiving dock so that she looked like an adolescent Medusa. She could almost hear the hissing of the electrodes like so many sibilant snakes. The woman stepped back. "Okay?" she asked. The girl knew she didn't expect a response, negative or otherwise. She wondered what they would do if she said 'no'. The woman smiled, a dry practiced movement of her lips that was clinical and without meaning.

Ok, have other things to do today. Later.

We got the big check today. I imagine my FIL is spinning in his grave right about now knowing we profited from his will. Actually, I'm not sure it was like that in his will. Maybe MIL decided to pass along the wealth. Either way the duplex on Perlock was given to my husband (the stepson) and his stepdad's other two sons. There was a brief while where my husband and the eldest son were playing with the idea of keeping the joint and raking in the profit from the tenants. When they paid, of course. It was one thing after another. Fumigating, plumbing, painting, fines from the city because of the tenant's junk cars. Finally they came to their senses and decided to sell. Thank God! It sold for about $40k below assessed value. A bargain! So, the checks have been cut and now we're just trying to tie up the loose ends with the other owners. No more $80 grass cutting fees, no more court dates, no more fumigating or crooked plumbers. I really feel like we dodged a bullet there.
Now I can start worrying about next year's taxes.