Tag Archives: Personal

Morning Musings

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Good morning, everyone!winter-rural road-ahead

It’s a frosty one here on the Canadian prairie this morning; my phone registers our temperature as -36 C. Definitely CRISP, but warmer than the city of Saskatoon, which is -39 C or -37 F, according to Environment Canada. The predicted high today is -27 C.

Needless to say, our furnace is running pretty steady. I’m so thankful we don’t have to haul in firewood and keep the place warm with the old wood stove! We’ve had a couple more snowfalls this month — not heaps, but enough to keep the snow removal people on the go.

Our cats have serious cabin fever. During most of this winter our weather has fluctuated and they’ve had a few days every week when they could go out. But this cold spell (below -20 C) has settled on us all week and they don’t venture out for more than a few minutes until they’ve had enough.

And I have a cold. Mostly sinus drip, for which I’m taking decongestant and drinking hot stuff. A great day to stay inside and let my imagination wander to green grass and budding trees. The high for next week Wed is to be -16 C, so we will slowly come out of this.

I just came across this little verse in the 1974 Friendship Book of Francis Gay. I don’t know if I should find this a comfort or not?
When snow is deep and toes are numb,
when aches and pains make faces glum,
it’s odd to think you’ve only got
four months to wait to feel too hot!

Anyway, I wish you all a good day, wherever in the world you are. My thanks to all of you who are reading and following this blog. I’m delighted that I can “visit” with so many people this morning without having to leave my warm house. 🙂

 

Paper Airplanes & Haiku

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Good morning everyone!

I’m up before the sun today, but it’s slowly getting out of bed. Our weather’s been up and down for most of the winter, but the forecasters are telling us now that we’re in for a spell of -20 to -30 C, such as you’d expect in February here on the prairies.

A great time to stay home, but our comfy conveyances are so handy nowadays. Not like in Grandma’s day when the rare trip to town meant piling into the old sled (sleigh?) with warm stones at their feet and bouncing across frozen fields. These cold snaps were when moms and grandmas circa 1900 darned the socks, patched clothes, wrote letters, and got their quilting done.

But here I am this morning, hopping around the globe via the internet to pop in on poets in Australia, Mexico, Britain and the US. I’ve read Frank Prem’s new book of poetry and his request for pre-pub readers and reviewers, then shared a fishy limerick with Kristian.

Now I’ve finished an interesting article on Objective Hokku written by David from I-assume-the-US. He explains that Objective Hokku is simply a reflection, via the poet, of what it there, making no comparisons, offering no personal opinion or interpretation. I’ll take a stab at it:

Winter morning.
The cat curled up
In the office chair.

You get the immediate picture and some sense of coziness. This verse doesn’t tell you that the office chair is mine and I should be in it, that because I’m too soft to dump the cat out, I’m sitting beside it on a hard-seated folding chair typing this. 🙂

The poem below is haiku, because it definitely leads you to a conclusion about my reading habits. 😉 Actually it’s more of a senryu, a haiku which makes a wry comment on human nature.

all the books
I hope to someday read
paper airplanes

And this even more so:

high pressure system
distant cousins arrive
family picnic drenched

Even though I’m not into the deeper significance of haiku and hokku, I do enjoy these “snapshot” verses. I hope you do, too.

I Lift Up My Eyes and Behold!

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It’s February! When did that happen?

Actually, I didn’t literally “lift them.” They moved themselves away from the computer monitor after a long formatting stint.

I’ve heard some writing gurus advise authors to “avoid wandering body parts.” Keep arms, legs, eyes, etc, in the body at all times. Don’t say, “He threw a hand up in the air,” or “She cast her eyes toward the open door where her co-worker stood,” or “His nose ran toward the scent of her perfume.”

But I did take a break and check the calendar. I’ve spent a month, off and on, preparing a book for publication. The originator is calling it Hari & Rudi in the Land of Fruit  and it’s an allegory along the lines of Pilgrim’s Progress, but involving two young teens. This story is actually the setting down of a dream the author had as a young lad in England back in the early 1970s.

Snail

I’ve been snailing along on this project for about eight weeks, but today I’ve finished formatting the manuscript, except for inserting the drawings. As soon as I have those, onto Amazon it goes. Stay tuned… And if you’re willing to write an unbiased review for Amazon, let me know. 🙂

The Word of the Day prompt this morning is LEARN. Very fitting. I have learned — and relearned — a number of things in the past month.
Like…
…how much time it takes to polish a manuscript. (Hint: you finally just give up.)
…once more, how to use WordPerfect to format the manuscript
…how much back-and-forth communication there must be between a writer and an editor.
…what differences exist between British English and ours on this side of the pond.

We’ve learned that pencil drawings do not work. They can’t be rendered clear enough to show up in an insertable file. However, when I said I needed pen drawings, the originator of the tale e-mailed back, “What do you mean by pen?”
(You British readers can tell us what a pen is called over there. In some books I’ve seen it called a byro. Pronounced like eye? Or like ear?)

My son-in-law did an excellent job with the cover graphics. I should write oodles more books to make use of his talents. However, the time involved in producing said books is rather off-putting. My original plan for January was to put my Sewing room to rights and finish projects there. 😉

I’ve learned how high the laundry can pile up in my clothes hamper and we still don’t run out of something to wear, and how much pasta you can eat before your noodle is fried. This all makes me think of Nano-Wrimo days. 😉

I’ve learned how one-track I can be. And maybe it’s necessary, because it would be so easy to push something like this off. I’ve taken time to read a few books for pleasure and a few books with British teen main characters for research, but most every day I’ve worked some on this project.

Thank to all of you who’ve been faithfully following my blog during the interim. I hope I can soon get some other things written. And I trust you’re keeping warm and/or enjoying the ups and downs of the season.

Give Us This Day

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calendar + quote

I wanted to share this neat quote with you this morning but couldn’t think of a proper title for my post — until I spotted one of the “Our Daily Bread” devotional booklets I keep around for quick inspiration.

The title, “Our Daily Bread”, is taken from The Lord’s Prayer. Responding to his disciples request, “Teach us to pray,” Jesus gave them a sample prayer. (Matthew 6:9-13) Included in this is the phrase, “Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our trespasses (or debts)…”

I know the whole phrase is asking God to meet our needs of the day, but this morning the words really impressed me: “Give us this day…” A great title for my post!

I wouldn’t want to miss this day — or any day. Time goes by fast enough. Also, I hope to make good use of today. It’s my hope and prayer that I can accomplish some goals, and also enjoy today’s hours. Yesterday I finished the final edit (I hope!) on the manuscript I’ve been working on and put it together as a pdf, ready  to send to proof-readers. Today I plan to deal with some of my own work that’s been piling up while I gave most of my attention to this project.

“This is the day the Lord hath made; we will rejoice and be glad in it.” Psalm 118:24

Oodles of poets have written about living in today, dealing with today’s problems, enjoying this time. They remind us that we shouldn’t rush through these hours, but stop to smell the roses blooming today, and store up some of today’s goodness and/or good memories for our future days.

Here are two verses from Annie Johnson Flint’s poem, One Day At A Time

Not yesterday’s load we are called on to bear,
Nor the morrow’s uncertain and shadowy care;
Why should we look forward or back with dismay?
Our needs, as our mercies, are but for the day.

One day at a time, and the day is His day;
He hath numbered its hours, though they haste or delay.
His grace is sufficient; we walk not alone;
As the day, so the strength that He giveth His own.

A Light, Enjoyable Series

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Over the Christmas holidays I discovered a new series and have been reading through them one after the other. This is the Markham Sisters series by Diana Xarissa, who also does the Aunt Bessie (An Isle of Man Cozy Mystery) series.

The Markham sisters are two retired teachers who spend their little inheritance windfall on a bed & breakfast in what they think will be a calm little English village. Which it is, for the most part; the locals do their best to make the sisters welcome. The constable drops in often just to check on them—and is easily persuaded to stay for a bite to eat, seeing what a great cook Joan is.

Owning a bed & breakfast has been Joan’s dream since she was young, and since she’s the older, she’s persuaded younger sister Janet to go along with the plan. But running a business and dealing with customers sometimes proves intriguing. Joan has a stronger sense of propriety — which means “no snooping.” It’s Janet who gets quite curious about people who are acting suspiciously or whose stories don’t add up. Joan tells her to mind her own business, but Janet can’t resist doing some investigating.

This series is quite tame, more along the lines of Nancy Drew mysteries. Just what I like: no dead bodies discovered, but smaller crimes like art fraud, an odd shortage of narcotics at the drug store, counterfeit money being passed, and people who aren’t who they claim to be. The novel “cases” are named alphabetically and each book is a short, easy read.

There are ordinary day-to-day details some might find rather boring, but I enjoy the setting and characters. I’d take away one star, though, for the way the sisters interact sometimes. They are in their 60s but Joan is still bossing Janet like a teen older sister — at times this seems overplayed. And Janet, when she’s miffed, still sticks her tongue out behind Joan’s back. I’d think if they’ve lived together all their lives they’d have developed more of a respect for each other, show more of an accepting, “live-and-let-live” attitude. (Mind you, I’ve never lived with a sister for years, so I can’t say what roles they might fall into.)

There is a certain “ghost” angle written into these tales that, for my part, could have been left out. In the stories I’ve read so far it’s only been references to sounds Janet hears and occasionally a strange wind slamming a door.

Anyway, I’d give this series four stars. I read each book separately, but I see the author has published collections now, available free to those of you who have Kindle Unlimited. Here are first four cases:

A Markham Sisters Collection - ABCD by [Xarissa, Diana]

 

Birds, Books and Verses

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Hello Everyone!

I’ve been dropping in here and there on other people’s blogs this month, but haven’t posted much of anything myself. It feels like “too long” but my time has been devoted to going over and polishing an acquaintance’s book.

Some great writer once said, “A book is never finished; it’s finally just abandoned.” Well, coming to the end of my fifth edit, I’m ready to abandon this book to the marketplace. I still have to set it up on Amazon and insert the images, but I can see light at the end of the tunnel.

Hari & Rudi in the Land of Fruit is a Christian allegory along the lines of Pilgrim’s Progress. The main characters are two young teens who find themselves on an intriguing journey through a strange land. Here they meet creatures who represent the fruit of the Holy Spirit: Joy, Peace, Love, Goodness, Patience, etc.

Doing this work has given me a good idea of that final drive necessary to get a book “out there” in a short time. (I’ve written a few of my own that are just waiting for that kind of commitment. 😉 )

To get some idea of teen fiction, I’ve been reading some very interesting books for teens, like the first book in Gordon Korman’s Kidnapped series. He’s a very good writer and this book is WELL done!

Last night, for something different — and because I enjoy reading haiku — I downloaded a book through Kindle Unlimited. The title is Redbird tree: one thousand haiku, and it’s written by James Dildine. I really like his introduction, about how the great haiku poet, Basho, didn’t limit himself to a rigid form, but wanted each verse to share a mini- experience with his readers. Then the author shares his own verses, not fussing about exact number of syllables and such. Which is fine, but…

What I’ve learned from this book so far is how important it is to get the formatting right — and if you can’t, then hire someone who can. Poetry is as much visual as sound, so when verses look like this…

86.) Afternoon rain The afternoon

rain
was cool and very welcome
spirits damp, not wet 87.) Neighbors

leaving

Storms came after noon,
with antlers high
they both left,thun-
der followed them

…it makes your eyes cross!
Note: This writer numbers and titles each haiku, and about half of his verses come out normally.

I took a break from editing Thursday and we went into the city to meet some writer friends for coffee and do some shopping. This afternoon and tomorrow dinner I’m cooking at the Villa, the seniors’ residence where I work on a casual basis. While in the city I saw this neat little car, so of course had to write a verse about it:

Mercedes
cherry red
executive class

Another treat we had yesterday: around 5 pm I looked out the back bedroom window and saw the Grand duke himself — our resident great-horned owl — sitting on a branch behind our property. He sat there awhile, so we got quite a clear look at him, all puffed up for the -20̊C evening.

We’ve actually had a very mild winter this time around, but right now the temp has dipped low. Supposed to be much milder next week. And a SUPER-moon + lunar eclipse tomorrow, I hear!

Thinking of birds all puffed up from the cold reminds me of the magpies we’re seeing hanging around our feeder. Which led me to write this verse last night and post it on Tree Top Haiku:

Winter Magpies

winter magpies
fat from feasting at the feeder
parade past the cats
🙂

And one more bird I’ll leave with you as a smile this morning. Apparently this is an aracani +/or tucano. The “thought” is mine. 😉
unique aricari