More Pea Gravel Patio Adventures

This has been one busy weekend! I finally got my patio finished. I'm pretty pleased with the result but if I never have to haul another 50 lb bag of pea gravel from my car to the garden again, I'll be happy. I ended up using approximately 42 bags of gravel which is over two tons. It looks good, I do have to say.

I broke the new patio in this weekend by lighting a fire in the firepit. Fortunately, I was not joined by Larry the Potential Serial Killer though I must admit, I was a little paranoid that he'd stop by. In the end, it was just me and the girls who rather enjoyed sitting on my lap and enjoying the fire. It's hard when they both want to sit on my lap since I have only one lap and they're two long dogs.

Aside from the patio, I spent the weekend shopping for my upcoming visit to London. The shopping wasn't just for London- in my efforts to shed my excess weight, I dropped a size in clothes and much of my fall wardrobe is a little bigger than I am. Not that I'm complaining. It gives me an excuse to go shopping. It was a good weekend for it- there were sales galore. I like this time of year because the summer clothes are on clearance. It's a good time to stock up for next year but also to get some good layering type of clothes to wear under heavier sweaters and cardigans.

I'm getting excited about London-it's going to be rather nice to get to spend some time being a 'tourist'- usually my trips to the UK are family-oriented which is wonderful but they don't allow the same freedom as an actual vacation just because there are so many people to see. Also, it seems that everyone is always trying to feed me. It'll be nice to have a little bit of time where I get to explore on my own and eat what I like. My cousin is coming to spend some time in London with me- I haven't seen her for many years so it'll be fun to see how she's doing. After the work part of the trip is over, i'm heading to my grandparent's which will be nice.

The only part I'm worried about is missing my pups. I know they'll be safe with their 'grandparents' but it'll be hard to be away for 10 days without seeing them. I'm sure they'll be fine, right?

I only have 10 days before I leave- there still seems like a lot to do but there always does before you go away anywhere. The hard stuff is sorted- my passport is valid and I have a temporary green card so I shouldn't have any travel problems. The part I hate is being on the plane- it's an overnight flight and no matter how hard I try, I simply can't sleep properly on a plane.

Still, I have time before I have to worry about that. There's another weekend in there and since I don't have any more landscaping plans, I'll have plenty of time to take care of things next week.

For now, I plan on enjoying what little of the weekend I have left and being a little sore from all my pea gravel exertions. Still, they say "no pain, no gain," right?

And I gained a nice little patio so it was probably worth the pain.

Happy Monday!

Virtual Time Travel

It’s funny how some things can take you and throw you back in time as though you’ve entered a time warp. I’ve written before about how I think smells and sounds can do that but sometimes, it’s as simple as an email.

I had an email through Facebook from a friend I made when I was six years old in my very first year of Infant School (what we call Elementary School in the UK). It was in the days where I learned to read, using books from “The Village With Three Corners.” This was a series of books that they used to teach and encourage reading skills as well as other basic skills. The characters in the books were Roger Red Hat, Billy Blue Hat and Jemima Yellow Hat.

I remember the books. Once a child mastered basic reading skills, the books moved up to become a little more complicated with bigger words. I was a voracious reader. To this day, I remember my frustration of being in play school (Pre School to my American readers), holding a PB Bear book and wanting SO badly to know why PB was in bandages. The pictures told me that he was skiing and he fell but other characters were worried and trying to get him to eat something. I wanted to know more. I wasn’t satisfied with pictures. I wanted words.

So, when I did learn to read and those mysterious squiggles became meaningful words, I couldn’t be stopped. I moved quickly beyond The Village of Three Corners into the “Green Spark” series of books. I was the first in my class to do so. I’m not bragging. I don’t think I ever thought of that as an accomplishment. I always wanted to be reading my next book instead of worrying about why my classmates weren’t reading at the same pace as me. I was a junkie and books were my drug.

Yet I don’t just remember the books. I remember my classroom and sitting next to my friends. I remember the Christmas play and how our class was disappointed because Mrs. Herris’ class ALWAYS got to be the angels in the Nativity and got to sing “Away in a Manager” and just had to stand around in our normal clothes with a homemade hat and sing boring songs like “Once in Royal David’s City.”

I remember the exciting days of writing with pencil and having trouble with that pesky letter “Q”. I could do it, I just took my pencil off the paper in the wrong place and my teacher said it was wrong. We’d line up at the pencil sharpener in the mornings to make sure our writing implements were ready.

Then came the day when they let us get to use pens in class for the first time. We used Beryl pens. They were blue ink. They bled through the paper if you pressed too hard. The pen was red. The caps had a knob on top that we’d chew off absentmindedly. Some of the boys chewed it off on purpose just to get a new, unmarred pen.

They were the days where we collected erasers and swapped them. (We called the ‘rubbers’- it was before the U.S. translation of the word ‘rubber’ was even so much as a blip on my radar.). We had milk from little glass bottles that was room temperature. School lunches smelled like bread, spam and gravy. We didn’t actually eat bread, spam and gravy but to a young child, that’s how it smelled.

There are so many memories from those early years of my academic development that came rushing back when I got the email on Facebook. The email came from a friend named JoAnne. She was in most of my classes from the first year of infant school until my last year of school in the U.K. when I’d moved up to senior school. She wasn’t my best friend but she was a friend who was one of those rare people who are so familiar and part of your life that they feel like they’re supposed to be there. As a child, you take those for granted.

I went to her birthday parties. I remember her little brother. I remember her parents.
Yet because she wasn’t my best friend and, by the time I left England, we both moved in different circles, I lost touch with her after I moved. She became part of the landscape of my childhood without standing out as a significant part of it.

Yet, clearly she was. When I got her email, I was so excited and overjoyed because with the email came that string of memories. For a few brief moments, I was back in the classroom of Mrs. Simpkins. I sat at a desk that opened up to let me put my books and pens and pencils inside. It had an old inkwell that we no longer used since our ink was already in the pen but we used the inkwells to hold our mini pencil sharpeners and sometimes, we sharpened our pencils into the well. Thus, if you stuck your finger inside, it emerged black with the lead from many a sharpened pencil.

This memory as well as so many others rose again in my mind. The memories have been there, dormant for a while. They surfaced individually as something triggered them but never as a flood that became an almost time-travel experience.

I was back, for a time, in the territories of my youth. It is a fun and nostalgic place that I should visit more often. It was before the days where boys became more than smelly, spitty things to girls and getting to stay up late meant staying up to 9 p.m. on a Friday or Saturday. Those were uncomplicated days and in many a way, I miss them.

It’s nice that such a simple email from a long lost friend can be an experience. Not only does she bring back memories but she also brings forward the chance to reconnect with someone who’ve I thought of over the years but thought was lost to the passing of time.

I’m a firm believer that time travel does exist. It’s not physical and we can’t change anything but with a simple reconnection, we can be thrust back into the life we’ve lived before.

And I, for one, think that’s a magical thing.

Happy Friday and have a great weekend!

Time Traveling...Again.

I time traveled again today and, as before, it happened without much warning.

I spent the weekend at my parent's house since I have two nieces who recently celebrated birthdays and I, the dutiful aunt, had gifts for them. Having discovered that the oldest of my two nieces is a reader, just as I'd been as a child, I thought back to what I would have liked at her age. As a result, I ordered three of my favourite books from childhood from a UK based used book store. The books were, "The Owl Who was Afraid of the Dark," "The Worst Witch," and, my all time favourite- "Dogger"- a book about a little boy who loses his cherished stuffed toy dog but through the kindness of his older sister is reunited with it.

Sadly, I think my niece wasn't very impressed with the books at all. I'm hoping when she gets a little older, she'll enjoy them just as I did. If not, well...I tried and next time a gift-giving occasion arises, I'll try again to find something I think she'd like.

Anyway, aside from the birthdays, I had lunch with a friend which was very nice since she, too, is a writer and it's always nice to talk writing for a while.

I also was asked by my parent's if I could clean out my old bedroom since my dad wants to start one of his slightly tumultuous renovation projects which involves remodeling my old room. Actually, from the sounds of it, it sounds a little like it's going to demolish my old room but he seems to know what he's doing so...we have to trust him. For now, at least.

So, I spent a good part of today going through my old things which is where the time traveling came in. I found remnants of many ages and stages of my life from the very first 'published' piece of writing I did- when I was about nine, we had to write a fable so I wrote, "How the Sheep Got his Fleece." My teacher liked it so much she typed it up and mounted it on the wall for everyone to see. She said, "I want you to know what it looks like to see your name in print." It was nice to find that old story again.

I found the giant card, decorated with hand-sketched and coloured pictures of Mickey Mouse that my old friend, Lee Hudson, had drawn. Inside were all kinds of notes and messages wishing me luck in America. It was signed by most of my teachers and all of the people in my house at school. It was a bittersweet find- one that makes me smile at the thoughtfulness of my peers but sad that it was another life and another time. Some of those signatures belong to friends I have on Facebook but others...I'll probably never know where they ended up.

I also found my slightly cringe-worthy high school box. It was an old cardboard box, every inch covered by Sharpie-drawn pictures, words and cartoons that my friend, Amy, had done for me. When I'd originally got the box, it had a stuffed monkey in it. I didn't want to throw the box away so it became my memento box. Inside, I found old yearbooks, nostalgic trinkets that reflected my crushes and crazes of my adolescent years. I found pictures, cards and all kinds of memorabilia that is a visual trail of how I used to be.

I found college papers, articles from when I was a journalism major. They were graded and had enthusiastic comments on them from one of my favourite professors- Dr. Caroline Dow. Unfortunately, I found out she passed away from cancer a few years ago so I couldn't bring myself to throw those papers away. She'd believed in me so much and I know I disappointed her when I changed from a journalism major to theatre. To this day, I wonder if I made the right choice but since I liked where I've ended up, I can't look back and regret the decision.

I also found boxes of theatre playbills that is a chronological history of my obsession with theatre, photos of my high school friends, photos of me in high school. I was a supremely shy girl, very lacking in self-esteem, thinking myself very unattractive. I still have traces of that but, for the most part, have accepted that I am what I am and that's not so hideous. It's amazing to see those pictures and realize that I was a bit stupid to think I was so unattractive and ugly back then. I don't look so bad. Some photos, I think I actually look quite pretty. I hate that I couldn't see that then but I suppose most people doubt themselves in high school.

I continued my sorting and unearthed a collection of trinkets and papers from when I was a theatre intern in Maine for a summer and an apprentice the next. I loved Maine. If I were ever to be wealthier, I'd get a summer cottage up there. There's nothing better than the feel of an evening by the fire on a cool, fresh Maine beach. We used to go to the beach after the shows were done and sit out, drink beer and just talk. It was a great couple of summers.

I found articles I'd had published in the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette when I'd been working there as a receptionist/library assistant. Short on staff, the features editor was looking for some articles and I volunteered. One of them made it to the front page of the Lifestyles section.

I kept all the mementos I mentioned above but I also threw away bags and bags of things that meant something at the time but didn't hold enough strong memories to justify keeping them. I am a pack rat of sorts but I also have the ability to know when to let things go which makes for a nice balance.

Essentially, I spent part of today looking back over my life through things that I've kept to remind me of it. It was a nice day, if a little sad. It's always bittersweet to look back at our lives and realize how far we've come even though some things were left behind. The things that are important to us change a little over time even though the really important things like friends, family and passions stay the same.

I kept the things that were most important to me. Now I just have to find somewhere to put them. That's the problem with memories; they always need a place to live. Yet I don't want to lose them so even if it means cluttering up a closet, I'll keep them with me as long as I can.

Because, sometimes, it's nice to travel back in time.

Happy Monday!

In which I Tried to be Nice but Failed Miserably (Sorry, Stephanie Meyer)

I promise I'm going to try to hold back from complaining about anything related to Twilight, Stephanie Meyer or anything resembling syrupy, unoriginal, annoying vampire fiction. At least for today. I think I need to read something else that's really bad; then again after I read The DaVinci Code by Dan Brown that sent me on a rant that still isn't quite over, even though it's been several years since I read it. To be fair though, Angels and Demons, the prequel to The Davinci Code. was much worse. I mean, that one had the self-proclaimed 'Harrison Ford in Tweed' hero, Robert Langdon falling from a high flying helicopter and he escaped with nary a bruise.

Here's a confession though: Sometimes I read Dan Brown's fiction because it's so bad, I relish it. There's still a couple of his books I haven't read and I'd like to think I can restrain myself. It shouldn't be too hard. After all the last one I read was so silly, I can't believe it got published. It was something like Digital Fortress or something. There's a couple of them that sound the same. All I know is that he started writing the book with a female heroine who was supposed to be smart but she ended up getting pushed to the sidelines because the men around her were much smarter. It was bad. Though the book had one of my all-time favourite "Don't Write Like This" phrases: "Her olive gaze was keen." To this day, I'm not quite sure whether he meant she had green eyes that turned everything around her green and keen or whether she had mysteriously replaced her eyeballs with pimento stuffed olives. Both of them make for an interesting visual, you have to admit.

Other than the Strictly Research Harlequin books I read, I haven't read anything bad since Breaking Dawn. I've read good books. I don't know if that's because I've just picked good books since then or because that book was so atrocious that everything else pales in comparison.

At the moment, I'm reading a popular fiction book: The Time Traveler's Wife. I wasn't sure about it at first. The time traveling was a bit confusing in the beginning but then it evened out and it got interesting. I also wasn't sure about it because I was afraid it was going to be some silly, too fictional to be real love story. Not that there's anything thing wrong with a love story but if the lovers in question don't at least have a couple of scenes where they're ready to throw knives at one another, it's not realistic to me. Then again, I am the person who couldn't get through Wuthering Heights. Talk about a couple of drips. They actually probably would have thrown knives at each other, come to mention it. Most of the time, it seemed like that hated each other. I think it was one of those grand passions that are so famous in fiction. Unfortunately, they were both so despicable, I really wished they'd both just ride off into the moors and get eaten by the Blair Witch or something.

Um, yeah, Captain Monkeypants may still be feeling a little snarky. Sorry about that.

Back to The Time Traveler's Wife. It was a loaner from a good friend who insisted I finish it. So I perservered even though I don't do well with the concept of time travel. To me, it's the same level of confusion as concentrating while trying to brush my hair in the mirror. I'm not terribly good at the whole reverse image thing. I get befuddled. Time travel befuddles me. All that paradoxical stuff in which future people can travel back and talk to past people but not be seen by their present people or whatever...it's all rather perplexing. It's one of those things I'd rather be perplexed by rather than have someone try to explain it. Like all things I don't understand, it's magic. That's good enough for me.

But this book isn't confusing now I'm into it. I'm intrigued. I'm almost done and I think I might have figured out how it's going to end and if I'm right, I don't think I'm going to like it but I might love it. I confess, sometimes I'm a skipper. This means that I cheat, I skip to the end of a book because I can't wait to see what happens. I'm trying to be better about that lately so I'm not skipping to the end of this book.

The reason I might not like it is that it's not going to be a completely happy ending. I might love it because if I'm right, it means the author did a brilliant thing in placing an almost throwaway scene strategically towards the beginning of the book and I almost didn't think anything of it. I love it when that happens. I love that I'd have to read the second time to see if knowing the ending spoils the book. I'm weird like that, I suppose but I love to reread a good book, particularly one with an excellent ending.

Endings are hard for writers. There are some writers I enjoy who cannot write a decent ending to save their life. Stephen King comes to mind. He falls into the trap of building it up so much that the ending is almost a complete letdown because there's nowhere to go. I think It is the best example of that. I loved that book until the end. The flashbacks were clever, the story built up, it was creepy and scary and then when you found out that the It in question was really just a glorified giant spider, it was a bit of a letdown. Pennywise the Clown was WAY creepier. Dean Koontz is also pretty bad at endings. I think horror writers have it hardest because creating the horror is much easier than explaining it. After all, it's really just a variation on the old saying that there's power in a name. There's a power in knowing in a horror novel. Once you know what the Big Creepy is, it's far less creepy. It becomes an object that can be confronted because it is known. It's the not knowing that's the scariest thing of all.

Stephen King's son released a novel fairly recently. His name is Joe Hill and the novel is Heart Shaped Box. For a first time novel, it was actually quite a good read. It definitely had some moments of creepiness. When he released it, he didn't publicize who he was but one look at his photo on the back cover and it was pretty obvious to anyone who spent vast amounts of their teenage years reading Stephen King novels that the two were related. They look extremely alike. It wasn't a mystery. Joe has a lot of similarities in his writing to the earlier Stephen King. I can't say it was the best horror novel I read but as a ghost story, it's definitely worth reading. But I will admit, the ending of that wasn't anything I really remember. I remember the hero and his unlikely love. I remember the ghost. I remember how the ghost came to being and I remember being very sad for the dogs. I just don't remember the ending very well. That's probably not a good sign.

I won't lie and say I'm great at endings either. They're hard. Really hard. The more you write the characters and the longer you spend with them, the harder it is. I've written eight novels now. Of those eight, there are five that are a series. I spent a couple of years with the main characters, my boys as I like to refer to them: John, Michael and David. They're all wonderful, even when they're evil and they do bad things. I killed one of them. Actually, no, I killed two of them. That was hard. I'd say that was a spoiler because nothing is ever what it seems, especially when I'm making up the details.

But the hardest part was writing the last book in the series and realizing that their story was done. Though I knew how it would end, getting there took a long time. I've rewritten the ending several times and I don't think I'm 100% happy with it. It needs to be edited more. It needs to be tidied up. It needs to be tighter. But I couldn't quite let go of them because I was afraid that would be it. Those boys would leave me and I'd have to move on.

Those boys haven't left me though. They're in my head all the time. I call it my literary schitzophrenia. They've been joined by a couple of other characters who've stuck with me but whose ending I had no trouble with. I usually don't start to write towards the ending until I know what it will be. Sometimes I know the ending before I know the beginning. Other times, I think I know the end but my characters tell me otherwise and I'm at their mercy.

I'd love to share my books with the world. I've dabbled with query letters but I haven't really jumped in feet first. I want those boys I wrote to get out into the world. I want them to grab the readers the way they grabbed me, their tale of good and evil, friendship and brotherhood and the sometimes brutal way they have to act to carry out their purpose in life. And I love how they take that purpose in life and stomp all over it.

But when I think about jumping in feet first, I think about poor Stephanie Meyer. She might be rich but there are always going to be people like me, brutally stomping on the ending to her Twilight saga and ranting about what a pile of crap it is. I'd like to think she was terrified to let the world read that, that it meant so much to her she almost didn't want to publish it because her heart was in that novel. But I've read it and as brutal as it sounds, there is no heart in there. To me, Breaking Dawn is just the self-indulgent whim of a writer who stopped remembering to let her characters tell the story and forced them into submission so she could write the ending she'd always visualized instead of the one that belonged to the book.

So, though I planned on finishing The Time Traveler's Wife tomorrow, I think I may stretch it out. The ending isn't too far off now and if it's anything like the rest of the book, it's going to make me think. Against my expectations, I like the characters and I like how unconventional they are. I especially like that though the time traveler and his wife are in love, they fight and argue like real people. I like thinking I know how it's going to end but knowing I might be wrong. I just hope that I'm not wrong about how good it's going to be. Endings are hard, in every sense of the word. But sometimes they can be as good as a beginning when it leaves you with a hope, a thought and a memory of how much it meant to have it, even for a little while. It's true for writing and it's true for life. It's always hard to say goodbye.

On that note, it is time for my ending for now. I know I said I'd be nice and not rant about Stephanie Meyer but, well, like I said, I can't always plan for how I write. It just happens. And I said I'd try. Clearly even the best of intentions go awry sometimes. I'll try to read something else awful so I can move on. Recommendations are greatly appreciated.

Happy Thursday, everyone.