OH MY GOD!!!! ( . . .and by god, I mean the one that invented chocolate cake.) We are twits!!!!!!

It seems that our blog has gone to the dogs.  I read all of the entries to Rocky.  He was understandably upset about the maligning of his fellow brethren – Roscoe and Max.  He also could not understand my questioning a bumper sticker that says “I Love Puppies”.  I was given his sternest dog look and the cold shoulder for over an hour.  I put an end to this by going to get a snack.  Rocky cannot resist a snack.  To make up for all of the canine bashing, I told him that I would write about what a fabulous dog he is and give examples of how he is like my third child and that I couldn’t write a word without him sitting on my feet. 

But then he decided to attempt to make me think I was crazy and now I’m going to tell that story instead:

I live in a two story house which has a porch on the second floor off the master bedroom.  Rocky loves to go out there and look out over his domain.  I guess for a dog, this is a great way to see the world or at least his immediate five neighbors.  Anyway, we never leave him out there for long because it gets too hot and sometimes he barks.  Today I was ironing (don’t get me started on that) in my room and let him out on the porch.  After he was out there for what I deemed long enough, I went and let him in.  I was talking to him and noticed he was not in the room with me.  Sometimes he runs off mid-sentence if he hears someone more interesting in the house.  But then I noticed that he was back outside, I was sure I had just let him in . . .  I opened the door again and watched him come back inside.  I went back to ironing and talking to him when I noticed he was gone again.  You guessed it – he was outside again!!  I opened the door and demanded an explanation.   He comes in, tail wagging, a ploy he uses to great affect to avoid being yelled at, when I notice how slow the screen door actually closes – plenty of time for a wiley Irish Terrier to escape back outside if his mom is not paying attention but going back to the ironing board. 

Maybe he wasn’t trying to make me think I’m crazy, maybe he was trying to teach me a lesson about dogs, hmmm.  So, no more dog blogs unless they are flattering to my canine friends.   And speaking of flattery – there is nothing more entertaining to me than calling Amylynn up and listening to Roscoe howl, that never fails to make me smile.

Anyone who knows me knows I shouldn’t be allowed to drive.  I’m not good at it and my mind wanders.  To make matters worse, I don’t deal especially well with stupid people.  I’ll bet you can see where this is going and it’s no where good.

Tonight, I got behind a car with a bumper sticker that said “I Love Puppies”.  Really?!  I have to drive behind someone who feels it necessary to let the world know this information about them.  Isn’t that the sort of stuff you’re supposed to put on Facebook or Twitter?  Now, I understand that not everyone likes puppies, but I’ll go out on a limb here and say that MOST people like puppies.  There are people who don’t like dogs but will admit they like puppies.  So, if you are in agreement with the vast majority of others on any subject – IT’S NOT A BUMPER STICKER.  Unless you’re stupid, that is . . .

Next, on my path to the sanctuary of my home, I came across a panhandler on one of the traffic light medians.  His card board sign said: Can’t get work Anything helps (I corrected the spelling).  My problem?  He’s holding a Starbuck’s cup!  Here’s the thing, he may have gotten that cup out of the garbage and used it for water or maybe someone pulled up and graciously gave him a latte BUT use your head man!  No one is going to give you money if you can afford Starbuck’s.  Not even the people who can still afford Starbuck’s.  People were flipping him off.  Sadly, this is not the first time I’ve seen this.

My final issue is personalized license plates.  I don’t really care about them one way or the other except when some stupid person puts their automobile’s make or model on them.  Frequently, on my ride home, I drive behind – BMMMMMW.  Yup, you guessed it!  It’s on a BMW.  I know this will come as quite the shock to Ms. BMMMMMW but  – we know you drive a BMW.  The license plate is on your car, it’s ON YOUR CAR!!!  It’s a car license plate, on your car, right there in the back under the BMW logo that came on the car.  What frightens me more is that there are four other people out there as dumb as she is – BMW, BMMW, BMMMW & BMMMMW.  I will never allow my children to marry yours . . .

My personalized plate says – HOSTILE666.  You should probably not drive behind me because I make sudden stops for puppies.  I feel better now, thanks.

As Amylynn has shared, we are revising It’s Clearly Love, again.  It’s excruciatingly painful for all of us.  We made Ed print all 450+ pages at my house and then we took it to Kinkos so that “evil mean copy girl” could give us a hard time about asking her to do her job – copy something.  After we ate lunch, we went back to pick up the two copies and she looked fine, I don’t believe she’ll suffer any lasting ill effects from copying 900 pages but, we will, she charged us $75.00 dollars!!! 

After I got my copy home, I started reading/editing.  I haven’t read ICL for months.  The three of us really thought it was done and we thought the first three chapters were so good that they would cause an agent or editor to want to buy the book.  Well, not so much.  I’ve mentioned before my true admiration for Amylynn for finishing not just this one book but several more short stories and the continued work on yet another novel size manuscript.  I re-mention this because Amylynn is right, I’ve ruthlessly attacked it.  We were true novices all around when she wrote it, she writes one thousand times better now and we edit one thousand times better as well.  It needs to be done and we are going to do it.  In fact, it is the only writing project I will be working on until it is complete. 

Here’s where the TRUE agony comes in, I started a new job last week.  For various reasons, I have had to drive about one and half hours away for training.  Oviously, I don’t know any of the people who work in this office.   Amylynn is not joking about her feelings towards this rewrite.  So, I’m sitting in a conference room, on my cell phone, trying to talk Amylynn off the ledge and back into her cube when I notice that several people are avidly listening to my conversation.  They all listened to me discuss some woman’s sprained ankle, her damaged engagement ring and her losing her virginity to her childhood crush.  I decided to step outside.  If you’re reading this anywhere but where we live, you won’t really understand why that is significant – I went outside in the midday sun, the temperature was 113.  My new co-workers decided it was time for a cigarette break and most of them don’t smoke . . .

Amylynn is worried that this revision won’t be her work alone.  As writers, you all know how important it is that our work reflects us, our voice, our style.  Some editors are too intrusive, they don’t just fix bad sentence structure and punctuation, they change the “you” in the writing.  The three of us are always super careful to never do this.  But, talking through the plot, the hook, the conflicts, that is sometimes a group effort and,  in my opinion, doesn’t take the “you” out of the story at all. 

So hang in there Amylynn – I’m with you ’til the end, even if it means my new co-workers think I hang around with loose, clumsy women and my make-up melts off from the sun at high noon in a parking lot hours from my home.

Boy, if you don’t read our blog for a few days you miss some really deep stuff!  I am no where near as spiritual as Amylynn or Isabella, in fact, I’m not spiritual at all.  I don’t believe in karma or the universe intervening on anyone’s behalf.  I think you are here once and the legacy you leave behind is totally up to you – so be a good person for goodness sake, and for no other reason.  I don’t advertise this fact because we live in a very narrow minded society.  I am a big fan of neuroscience and read anything I can find about it.  Understanding the human brain is fascinating.  Today, the leaps and bounds being made in this area are astounding. 

So, don’t worry about karma and the universe.  Just keep writing and if you are in the right place, at the right time, you’ll get published!

I have been married to Ed for more then 20 years.  I can truthfully say that I love him more today than on either of the two times I married him (long story).  Having admitted that, there are times I would gladly trade him for an iced venti cafe mocha with an extra shot from Starbucks.  Like all men, Ed has annoying habits.  Most men have them and keep them and then you can decide if you want to deal with them or not because you’ll never be able to change them.  Ed is different.  Ed has rotating annoying habits.  He has annoying habits that he replaces with other annoying habits, he invents new annoying habits or updates old ones with a twist BUT he never has the same annoying habits at any given time – it’s annoying.

Here’s his latest: He no longer says goodbye when he is done with a phone conversation.  He just stops talking.  You are left to wonder if he is done and about to hang up or if he is taking in needed air.  When this habit first appeared last week, I would stare at the phone when he hung up thinking “Did he just hang up or get cut off?  Oh well, whatever.”  After this happened lots more times, I realized he had given up using the word “Goodbye”. 

Now it’s like a game for me, I’m the type of person who will let you hang yourself if you bring enough rope and want to do so.  So, if he takes too long a pause, I hang up.  It makes him call back to ask if I hung up on him.  I never answer that question directly, I just say “I thought you were done.”  This behavior was starting to exasperate him so I finally pointed out his missing critical to good phone etiquette “Goodbye”.   He didn’t deny the missing “Goodbye” but he offered no excuse for it.  During our next phone conversation he said goodbye.  So it’s back but now I have to wonder what his next annoying habit will be . . .

Today, against my better judgment, I donated blood.  The problem with my donating blood is that I have a tendency to pass out every single time I do so.  In fact, I cannot recall a blood-letting that did not end this way.  For days afterwards, I am light headed and shaky.  Because I have a screw lose, I also had the vampires draw some extra blood to test in order to verify if I am eligible to donate platelets.  Donating platelets requires more than two hours, as opposed to the 45 minutes or so donating whole blood takes.  I can hear you now – Why Ava?  Why would you choose to be tested for something that will surely kill you?  Well . . . because the technician told me that they are only accepting platelet donations from O positive men.   That’s all I had to hear, I’m O positive!  As for the men part, what the heck!!!  My platelets are as good as any man’s.  I demanded that I be tested and my demands were met.  Too bad my demands are  not met with the same  alacrity at home, but I digress . . .

One of my friends is totally disgusted by this and demanded to know why I do it.  Seriously.  (Not my Quill Sisters, they accept and love me for my many insanities.)  She thinks that if donating blood makes you sick, you shouldn’t do it.  She added that most people have never and will never donate blood . . . and there you have – the reason I donate blood even though it makes me sick.

I haven’t blogged in quite a while because I’ve been really busy.  All of my company is gone and I’m finally done with several projects I had going at one time.  In the middle of everything, I was contacted by an old co-worker, who put me in touch with an author who needed help updating and fact checking two chapters of a text book.  Coincidentally, the text book is about the business I have been in for over twenty years.  I had a great time helping her and was paid for my services.  PAID.  Now, I know you’re all thinking it doesn’t really count because I wasn’t paid for writing but I did actually write two sections for the author – so there. 

Sadly, I haven’t written anything other than that lately – just looking over other people’s writing.  Amylynn has completed yet another short story.  It is really, really good and the rest of you need to beg her to post some of it as soon as she is done with a few minor revisions. 

Well, my timer is going off for the quiche I have in the oven and I have to go but I promise to post almost everyday going forward and I promise to be funny – because I am . . .

My short story is done and could be submitted, but I’m not going to send it in just yet.  I’m going to continue to monkey around with it so that I can avoid rejection.   I’m afraid . . . it will be the first writing I have ever had read by professionals other than technical manuals and email.  I’m really not sure I can do it!  How do/did the rest of you get passed your fears??

I certainly learned a lesson with my short story.  I knew my characters, my supernatural element, my tone – so I eagerly got started.  I was more then half way through when it was very obvious what I didn’t have was a plot.  Like a lot of writers, I tend to write by the seat of my pants.  I can write thousands of words a day (if no one is bothering me, Ed) with no problem.  Thousands of words that I sometimes don’t need!  I swear, I’m going to stop doing that.  The short story was supposed to be approximately 15,000 words.  No exaggeration, I threw away that many.  It took me four days to come up with a plausible plot AND I’m still not sure it works.  Here’s the lesson: work out your plot before you start writing, it really helps.

Amylynn is always griping about rewrites.  I sent out Night Shift to a few trusted people last evening and so I’m expecting an avalanche of revisions and edits!  I’ll keep everyone in the loop while I revise because I am determined to submit the story by tomorrow.