Perforation Problems

Sometimes you need a cookie so bad, and nobody else wants to get dessert. Then you stop to get gas on the way home and the gas station is in the same parking lot as a McDonald's. Fate. The cookie must not be ignored.

Ten minute hula hoop break at work... ...plus meeting my friend's daughter for the first time. So many babies! She's a cutie.

This past holiday season was the first that Michael and I actually spent together; usually he goes to NY on his own and I spend Christmas with my family. Since we're married now, that doesn't really fly anymore -- plus I miss the turd face. So this year we drove to New York to spend a couple days with the Kuehls before coming back to make the rounds with my folks. This meant that I got to experience a traditional Polish Christmas Eve dinner. My favorite part -- brace yourself -- was not the pickled herring, but the cheese-and-potato-filled pierogi. I know, shocker that I liked the cheese and potato part of the meal best. Yum. We thought there weren't any places in Indy to get fresh pierogi, and though we tried the frozen box variety, it just wasn't the same. But lo and behold, last night I was picking up some stuff from Kroger when I saw some in the deli. Delicious. Michael had to tell me what they're supposed to look like when they're done -- I kinda...

Trying to pick a paint color for the living room. Having a very hard time. So hard I apparently cannot write in anything but fragments. It's just too overwhelming. Green blue? Blue blue? Gray blue? Purple blue? AhhhhhhH!

Clyde has some kind of syndrome where all he wants to do with any of his toys is take them outside and leave them there. It's too cold to constantly be searching the yard for errant stuffed ducks, so when the yard iced over last night the toys were trapped in a FROZEN DEATH. Clyde found it alarming that I was taking pictures of all his toys. He could not actually pick them up and take them away from me, so he just kept walking over to stand on top of them. (The tennis ball is my official 365 pic for the day) I like ice when I don't have to drive anywhere. It's interesting. Especially when you have a macro lens. Taking REALLY CLOSE pictures of things is fun. I also liked how the ice filled the paths Clyde makes in the yard - he's too dainty to walk just ANYWHERE.  Yay, ice! Happy weekend, imaginary readers. 

Read this in a post on Brain Pickings today: "There may be some writers who contemplate a day’s work without dread, but I don’t know them. Beckett had, tacked to the wall beside his desk, a card on which were written the words: ‘Fail. Fail again. Fail better.’  It’s a bad business, this writing. No marks on paper can ever measure up to the world’s music in the mind, to the purity of the image before its ambush by language. Most of us awake paraphrasing words from the Book of Common Prayer, horrified by what we have done, what we have left undone, convinced that there is no health in us. We accomplish what we do, creating a series of stratagems to explode the horror."   -- Mary Gordon I don't know if posting quotes like this is inspiring or depressing. But I like the phrase "explode the horror." I'm going to make it my goal this weekend to focus on characters -- not plot, just characters. I really feel like that's what makes or breaks a story.

This is what I'm looking at. Excuse me -- this is that at which I am looking? Whatever, prepositions. Fort Behavior, aka Michael's old house that now serves as the office for Expected Behavior. I'm about to pull out my brains and squish them because the music they're listening to is making me anxious and twitchy. It's all screeches and reverberation. Programming may be a language but doing it is not like writing. No way I could write to this. 

Spring is coming.

I had a lovely day. The 25 degree weather must have had Presidents' Day off, too, because it was beautiful outside and warm enough that I kept the back door open for several hours in the afternoon. Clyde and I went for a run at a nearby park: (This is my official 365 pic; the rest are just bonus. Lucky you.)  It was muddy and Clyde was not really into the whole running thing. A couple times I looked back to see him sitting in the middle of the path, staring at me like, "Why are we doing this? This is stupid." We went back home and he promptly fell back asleep. For dinner we met some friends at Bluebeard . The menu had things like "orecchiette: tiger shrimp, merguez sausage, soffrito, hazelnuts, fennel cream sauce" -- what? I know a couple of those words. My eyes went to CHEESE PLATE and SPAGHETTI. I consider it an accomplishment that I convinced the table to order not just ONE cheese plate but TWO so I could try ALL THE CHEESES. Delicious. The rece...

I keep coming across different articles on the web with advice from writers, for writers - here I aggregate them for your viewing pleasure. Click the author's name to see the original article. Elmore Leonard My favorites: "Don't worry about what your mother thinks of your language" and "Leave out the parts readers tend to skip." Kurt Vonnegut My favorite: "Every character should want something, even if it is only a glass of water." John Steinbeck My favorite: "Never correct or rewrite until the whole thing is down. Rewrite in process is usually found to be an excuse for not going on." Neil Gaiman My favorite: "Remember: when people tell you something’s wrong or doesn’t work for them, they are almost always right. When they tell you exactly what they think is wrong and how to fix it, they are almost always wrong." Margaret Atwood   (The Guardian asked a bunch of authors to give their "dos and don'ts -- the entire ...

I ordered some prints the other day -- a couple larger ones for our bedroom and a bunch of smaller pictures I'd taken of flowers for elsewhere in the house. I have a grand vision in mind of a gallery wall with nature prints, but I'm not exactly sure how it's going to play out or where in the house it's going. We have a naked backsplash at the moment -- my grandma suggested putting the pictures there, which could be cool. We've also looked at mosaic backsplash but Michael is just so-so about it. I'm sure this is all very interesting to you. The point I'm leading up to is that it's really hard to do this whole home-decorating thing. It takes so much time, and I'm so indecisive. Good story, Haley.

You get not one but two pictures today! 1) We met my parents today for a walk with the dogs . It was pretty chilly, but the sun was out, so coulda been worse. 2) I'm still annoying Clyde with my macro lens. This time I stuck it in his bowl as he was eating breakfast.

This week (month) has been exhausting, which I think comes through in the lackluster quality of my recent pictures. But now I get a three-day weekend because of Presidents' Day -- and not only do I get Monday off, but I get the entire day to myself because Michael's going into the office. I can't remember the last time I had an entire day to myself. What will I do? Ah, the joy of having hours to fill with WHATEVER YOU WANT. I haven't been doing much writing lately. Lack of motivation is high. But I did go to hear author Chuck Klosterman speak at Butler in January, which got my writing brain running for awhile. He told the audience about a piece he wrote about a childhood enemy; it was a funny, self-deprecating story and a great example of how you can pull material from your own life and psyche. It got me wondering, though. I get urges to write about people I meet or things that happen to me (or others), but I'm always stopped by the thought, "What if this per...

My official photo for today is a picture I took of Maggie at work when she was in my office for our weekly meeting, but it occurred to me Maggie might not want her picture on my blog. She probably wouldn't care, but since I'm not really sharing this blog with anyone at the moment, I am not going to ask. So instead you get that standard of social media photos -- a picture of my dinner. Glorious! Michael and I met Matt and Courtney for dinner at Mo's Irish Pub, where I had grilled cheese and tomato soup with a shamrock on it.

Okaaaaay, it's a picture of Clyde. BUT! Clyde is not really the point here. The point is I got a fisheye lens for my phone for Valentine's Day.

Michael and I have an extremely unhealthy but awesome tradition of buying a whole cheesecake from The Cheesecake Factory for Valentine's Day. Then we eat it bit by bit for the next week. Here it lies in wait in the refrigerator.

I was mostly just tired today. I didn't have it in me to expend much effort in taking a picture. Clyde also felt kinda crappy - he seems to have maybe pulled a muscle in his back legs. Look at that sentence I just wrote. Seems-to-have-maybe. Hmph.

I met my friend Sarah for lunch today. We met while teaching, but she's a writer at heart. It's always good to talk writing and life and how to make writing your life. Also I convinced her to do Project 365, which she's going to use as a writing tool on her brand new blog :)

Yum

Michael has been reading The Wheel of Time series nonstop for the last 6 weeks - this morning he finished book 13 and was looking at me so wistfully that I had to give in and get the last book of the series out of its Valentine's Day hiding spot and let him read it early. He was holed up in the library all day and finished it around 2 am. What's he going to do now with no more to look forward to?

There was still a little bit of light left when I got home today, and the temperature was in the 50s - it was glorious. I walked outside with Clyde and took this picture looking up at our tree.

Poor Clyde. His life is so horrible. He never gets to eat anything good, he's not allowed to take his snake outside, and when I play Dance Central he has to be held captive so he won't jump on me. Clyde hates dancing. So risqué.

I had to go hide at work today to meet some deadlines. This is the cool book-page-covered table we have in there. I keep seeing pages from something called The Monkey Wrench Gang. Sounds like an exciting, adventure-packed romp through a circus garage.