Well I spent hours last night accomplishing nothing

the so-called studio, on a "neat" day

                               

                                Good Morning!

I have to tell you about my day, because it was a typical day in I-only-blog-now-and-then land. Blogger/Google has added this new applet, I guess you would call it, or add-in (who knows the difference among these, anyway? I mean, who under 40 knows the difference?) or maybe widget, that searches your text as you write and adds hyperlinks to anything it can find a reference to, whether it is important to your post or not. So I wrote this nice little essay and on the right start appearing photographs, most of them of Salman Rushdie--for a man in hiding he sure gets his picture taken a lot--well, maybe these were taken since he has come out in public again. Regardless, the photos and links to articles I don't care about started to appear in my writing and rather than do the smart thing, which I am doing now (starting over), I tried to pick and choose what I wanted and then--heaven forgive me--arrange the page the way I wanted it. Oh my what a disaster. I can't begin to describe the ensuing chaos, and I hardly need to. Those of you who have done battle with the PC-dragon know exactly what I'm talking about, and those of you who turn around and sneak back to the village and the work you are supposed to be doing have only an inkling and the more I explain the more you will wonder, "why didn't she just stop?"
The answer is, I don't know. I never do. Not until  maybe the 18th inning, although the baseball metaphor implies an equal score for both participants in order for the game to continue and this little piece of non-work would score more like website 24, Cindy 2 (I'm just giving myself 2 because I can't accept total defeat and it's my blog and I can lie if I want to).
Now I will attempt again to put up a couple of snapshots of my life, because I think a few of those reading  (dear math genuises: how many is a few of a few?) actually don't know me well. There is no attempt here to say these pictures define my life. They are just what happens to be on my camera. Yes, home pix. What the internet does best.

Only the dogwoods and redbuds add an inkling of color, and here it is, October  25 already.

See their inquisitive faces? They are asking that eternal and apparently unanswerable question: "Why doesn't Blogger have word wrap?" to which I know only one answer "Wordpress," to which I know only one other answer, "No I do not want to learn a new complicated glamorous blogging program. You will have to make do with this." And if one were to take the meta view, ultimately one reaches deep into the code and finds the true answer: HTML and probably behind that, like quarks and other things with spin and charm, C++, and if I'm wrong about that it just further proves my ignorance and will also give my sons a good laugh. Forget it. In the Platonic cave of technology I'm hardly chained to the wall, but I haven't exactly left the cave either, a state which makes the shadows and the real world equally confusing. I was wrong about the dogs, by the way. They haven't a clue about any of this. They are sitting there looking expectant because I made them. Dogs are great.

No, we did not get another puppy but this 6-week-old malti-poo at a local boutique was too irresistable for Shonte and I to keep our hands off him and his siblings. Such are the little rewards I give myself after yet another doctor's appointment. These brief excursions, if I can manage them at all, are typically followed by the consumption of well-deserved sugar and/or caffeine products. This is why I am overweight. I think I deserve treats. I'm like the expectant dogs. If you were inventing the world, wouldn't you make treats a good thing and not some ridiculous fabulation like "If you really loved yourself you would reward yourself with something good for your body, like a glass of nice, fresh water. You deserve to give your body what it needs to run right." 

On another recent excursion to the pet store (these are all medically prescribed, by the way. Really.), this lovely bird dug around in my delicate and expensive silk chiffon scarf without damaging it at all, just to come up with this shiny bit of cheap jewelry. We had a grand time snatching it back and forth from each other until the employees asked me to stop because I was teaching him it was okay to play with jewelry, which does not help them sell him/her. 

Now that I have thoroughly entertained you (I was listening to Gypsy this morning with my iPod on shuffle and it was a most interesting experience, because I've ripped very few of my own my own albums and mostly stolen music from the kids and Dave. It keeps things lively, if not always to my liking. But Let Me Entertain You, I like that about once a year, sort of like Brussels sprouts, no, better than Brussels sprouts, but still best consumed only occasionally), I will make the big announcement, in two parts.

ONE, I am doing NaNoWriMo again this year. I suppose the working title will be Nvl918, though the blog will remain www.nvl917.blogspot.com .

TWO, it won't really be me writing it. I present you the new and improved Cindy (if she can pull it off . . . ). Laid back, non-competitive, good loser, comfortable doing mediocre work, excellent at juggling many demands at once, cares more about her family than her petty achievements (but they gave me an icon to put on my website! That was worth all the trouble, right?), cares more about the companionship of sharing the event with fellow writers than she does an all-out win. Yup, that's me. Absolutely unprepared, going in by the seat of my pants, under doctor's orders not to be methodical or editorial but just let 'er rip, gasp, I feel as though I'm climbing the upwards slope of a very steep old wooden roller coaster, and everyone knows that once you are over the hump and into November, if you aren't strapped in tight, you die.

Which brings me to another point about Nanowrimo. If you are a writer, nano'ing this year or not, and you have not discovered Write or Die, get yourself to Google and download the program. It's written by Dr. Wicked, and you can use it online or download it. I would never ever be able to write without it. (and I'm a wimp, I use Gentle Mode.)

Now the morning is past and I will attempt to post some of my art. Next to home photos, pictures of your mediocre art put on public display is something else the Internet does really well. Here I go, joining the multitudes. Thanks for reading. Now enjoy the visual portion of our show. And tune in next week to my nvl917 blog and find out how the new laid-back me is coming along at writing almost 2000 words a day.