Design your album cover February 28, 2009
Posted by philangelus in sarcasm.5 comments
Here are the rules:
1 – Go to Wikipedia. Hit “random” or click http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random The first random Wikipedia article you get is the name of your band.
2 – Go to “Random quotations” or click http://www.quotationspage.com/random.php3 The last four or five words of the very last quote of the page is the title of your first album.
3 – Go to Flickr and click on “explore the last seven days” or click http://www.flickr.com/explore/interesting/7days Third picture, no matter what it is, will be your album cover.
4 – Use Photoshop or similar to put it all together.
Hello, hurt kitty February 28, 2009
Posted by philangelus in family.9 comments
It took a week. A week of going outside in the mornings and calling a cat who would come when I called, who would eat out of a dish on the ground in front of me and would rub her face against my legs but would jump away if I so much as twitched a finger. A week during which my Patient Husband told me, “Your friend is back” when we saw the injured stray sunning herself in the back yard (she almost never left it, except to go back into the woods) and one morning when I found the trap sprung only to find we’d trapped an extremely annoyed neighborhood cat who was not our Intended (and boy, did he tell me off!) And one day when, cooking a whole chicken, I went outside and tossed a piece of the gizzard into the cage and one to the cat (who devoured the one I’d tossed her, and wouldn’t go into the trap to finish the rest.)
And then, happiness.
Boy, was she mad. She was scared. She’d hurt her paws trying to dig her way out of the cage. But we had her. Triumphant, we had her.
We brought her to the animal shelter, who brought her to the vet, and the vet x-rayed her to find the break in her leg and figure out how bad it was.
That’s where I lose my faith in humanity again: her leg wasn’t broken. There are two bullets in the cat.
You know how it is, you’re out in the suburbs late at night, armed only with your trusty BB gun, when suddenly a menacing figure strolls out in front of you on the paved street, or perhaps it’s sitting in someone’s flower bed among the peonies, and fraught with terror, you have no choice but to defend yourself against this six-pound hellbeast with a taste for catnip.
So of course, I can fully understand why someone shot this stray kitty. Twice.
This is an old injury, but because of the way it messed up her shoulder, her leg is never going to function right again. The second bullet is near her spine.
I visited her at the shelter. The shelter worker who was helping us went in first, to a chorus of spits and growls. She came out, shaken. “You want to try?” Sure, I said. “Protect your face,” she told me.
Into the room I went. It’s the size of a closet. I stood by the back wall and talked to this growling, hissing bundle of hatred and mistrust. After a few minutes, she began rubbing her face on the cat tree where she was hiding. Two minutes more and she jumped to the floor. I huddled up in the corner, sitting totally still, and the cat started eating. She finished all her food, then turned to me, still growling.
And rubbed her face on my hands.
I kept totally still. She rubbed the rest of herself all over me, and the next time she put her face in my hands, I rubbed behind her ears.
That’s when she remembered: humans are good for pettings and lovings. Within two minutes, she was on my lap and purring. I knew right then that she could be socialized. It was going to be okay for her.
Her trip home tomorrow, maybe with more pictures if my camera doesn’t die.
Refinancing February 27, 2009
Posted by philangelus in sarcasm.5 comments
Remember how horrible our move was? I don’t even want to go back and look for the links to everything that went wrong when we were trying to move from Angeltown to Angelborough. It makes me sick inside. We moved in July and were still cleaning up the transactional messes in October, and last week I even found one more problem that no one had caught onto.
Yep, the move was cursed.
So naturally, I balked at refinancing. It was only when my Patient Husband pointed out that interest rates had dropped 1.5% that I agreed to doing it all over again. We’d be saving a skillion dollars a year, roughly.
First problem (because you knew there would be, right? Moving is a hairy-hairy, after all, and so is refinancing): our mortgage company would not call us back. They said they’d be delighted to refinance us, but after six or seven non-returned or non-answered phone calls, they’d lost our business.
We went with someone else, who was delighted to have us. Sounds good.
I’ll just skip to the end, then, and bring us to the morning of the refinance when I went to the bank to get a check for the closing costs.
The teller put the check into the printer, and it printed sideways.
I couldn’t help it: I just started to laugh. It’s like the final insult in all these cursed dealings, that the money would be there and the bank willing to give it to us, and the check wouldn’t print.
The teller reassured me it was fine and reprinted it. And again, it printed crooked. This time the teller said she’d waive the processing fee, and I asked her please not to because if she did, I’d feel guilty writing about it on my weblog.
Third time was the charm. I took home the check….and found we’d caught our injured stray kitty in the trap. Because of course, I needed one more thing to do.
10:30: drive the kitty to the shelter
11:30 pick up preschooler from the school
12:00 get home and throw together lunch
12:20 get back in the car and drive to Taxville County Registry of Deeds to refinance the house
1:00 somehow find the correct attorney in a building whose ambiance can only be described as a delicate fusion of “bus terminal” and “early federal prison.” Keep the baby and the toddler occupied while we sign 890742734 documents, including a document stating that the attorney had explained the documents to us, and another document stating that the attorney had explained the document stating that he’d explained the documents to us.
1:30 get back in the car again and race home so I can arrive before my oldest gets back from school.
We’ll stop there because I’m getting a headache just remembering.
We are, however, refinanced.
Unless they forgot to have us sign the form stating that we’d signed the form agreeing to sign forms that we needed to sign in order to request the other form.
Yeah. Something like that. Where’s my Advil…?
Alternative Lenten activities February 26, 2009
Posted by philangelus in religion.2 comments
Someone posted this on a forum, and I thought it awesome enough to steal it (er, I mean, link back it. Really.)
- Write a letter to someone who has blessed your life.
- Help someone study for a test
- Go to Church- Every Sunday!
- Smile at 5 people today
- Give God 15 min. of silence and prayer daily
- Give up something you would have a hard time giving up
- Tell a friend “why” they are a good friend to you!
- Drink water at dinner instead of soda and say a prayer for someone who can’t afford soda
- Read the Gospel of Mark (only 16 chapters!)
- Find the good in someone you dislike. Tell others about it
- Forgive a friend
- Pray for someone who has hurt you (They don’t deserve it, but they need it!)
- Go to Confession (start fresh again!)
- Work on giving up sin. Replace it with faith, kindness, honesty, chastity, patience, respect, and generosity toward others and God.
- Tell God you love him!
Lent: I give up February 26, 2009
Posted by philangelus in religion, writing.20 comments
Every year, I have a horrible time coming up with something to do for Lent.
For the non-Catholics reading this weblog, Lent refers to the 40 days before Good Friday (the day Jesus died) which we use as a time of spiritual inventorying and deeper reflection. The church encourages us to take on some extra practice during this time as a means of drawing closer to God, typically in the areas of prayer, penitence, or charity.
The easiest of these, of course, is penitence, and that’s why you hear people talk about “giving up something for Lent” as if that’s their only option. But most people find that praying more or taking on a charitable work is more likely to draw them closer to God.
Being who I am, of course, I can never come up with Just The Right Thing to do for Lent. And then after that, I suffer from Lent Creep (where the Right Thing To Do begins expanding on me.)
A couple of years ago, utterly stuck, I asked my guardian angel, “So, what do you think I should do?”
I suddenly remembered what the priest says on Ash Wednesday when you get your ashes: “Turn away from sin and be faithful to the Gospel.”
I thought, “I’m supposed to be doing that anyhow.”
Then I heard in my head, “Bible.”
And here I thought I’d be told to give up chocolate! No such luck. So instead, I read through three of the Gospels and a few of the epistles during Lent. The next year, I went further afield and did some non-Bible spiritual reading, and that’s what I did last year as well.
This year, I think it’s back to the Bible. I can get in 40 minutes of prayer every day, but for some reason it’s tougher to get the Bible reading done, probably because I need it to be quiet in order to concentrate on that, and, well… I have four kids.
Yesterday, though, I had a thought. If writing is my vocation, shouldn’t I somehow work on my vocation through Lent? Isn’t my vocation something that should draw me closer to God?
Therefore, I thought, it would be good and proper for me to make my Lenten devotion finishing up ♥My Book♥.
My Patient Husband said, “no way,” and I’m going to go along with that for a simple reason: because I intended to finish it by mid-April anyhow. Making that my Lenten practice would be like saying I was cooking for my family for Lent.
But in a way, it also makes sense, and I’m not entirely sure I’m not onto something. If God wants us to grow to our fullest potential, then it’s fully within the Lenten spirit to devote ourselves to doing it. Even if we find that thing enjoyable. Even if it was something we were going to do anything — as long as we do it single-heartedly.
Just a thought. I still haven’t unPaused literarily, although I’m going to push myself to do it soon. I’ve got the second half of the book mapped out in a document now. I just need to come up with the next scene, and I’ll be writing again.
Well, in and among all that praying and reading and the fish and stuff. Happy Lent! (And don’t forget your lenten penitential donuts!)
a mom moment: my kingdom for quiet! February 24, 2009
Posted by philangelus in family, kiddos, pensive.9 comments
Before I married my Patient Husband, I realized one day how much I live in quiet.
Left to my own devices, I seek out quiet and thrive in it. Writing, reading, thinking, and so on. That’s not to say I don’t turn on the music really loud sometimes or even just to have it on for background noise. But the quiet helps me retreat into my own head and do internal processing.
Yes, even on the subways. It’s a 95-decibel white noise and even shoulder-to-shoulder with 350 of my closest friends, there’s a solitude (or an isolation) that makes me a world unto myself. Yes, I loved high school in part because of the 80 minute subway ride in each direction, plus the walk on either end where I didn’t have to deal with anyone.
You could call me a misanthrope or an introvert. Either one. Sometimes both. I think around the time I was 12 I started telling people I hated humanity. Around the time I was 24, I decided maybe human beings weren’t all bad. Noisy, but some of them had redeeming qualities.
And then I had kids.
Holy toledo! There’s no way to prepare a quiet introvert for children. Extraverts seem to derive strength from being with other humans, recharging their batteries a little with each social interaction and immediately ready for more. This baffles me. I imagine extraverts take to parenting like a dolphin to the ocean, diving right into their children’s 24-hour-a-day neediness with a hungry desire for more time together.
Me? Sometimes, I wish I could put my entire family on pause so I could go sit in my room for half an hour and stare at the wall. Because introverts spend a little energy whenever they socially interact, and we recharge with time alone.
(For some reason, and I mean this in a completely loving way, I recharge with my Patient Husband as if I were alone. Not because he leaves me feeling alone or because he ignores me, since neither of those things is ever true, but because together we function as if we’re one person. So it’s kind of the blending of being together and being solitary, and it’s the perfect recharge balance.)
Lately, Kiddo#3 has been doing the typical five-year-old thing, where he talks for two hours straight. And it’s not just talking: he demands attention while he talks. About nonsense.
“Mommy? Mommy? Mommy graham crackers are brown and they’re my favorite and the baby likes to eat them too and when I was a baby I eated graham crackers and MOMMY MOMMY LOOK AT THIS it’s a graham cracker but it looks like a ROCKET, and I’m going to eat my rocket now WATCH ME WATCH MOMMY I’m going to eat my rocket but now it looks like a duck where do ducks come from Mommy do you know because I think they come from the pond but you can buy them at the grocery store too just like the lobsters MOMMY MOMMY ANSWER ME can we see the lobster tank the next time we go to the grocery store?”
After two hours of that, this introvert wants to go hide under the bed.
But I can’t because my Patient Husband is already hiding there. He gets all the good hiding spots. And the kids keep sliding aside the clothes hangers to find me in the back of the closet. Help.
Monday Morning Question: mansions February 23, 2009
Posted by philangelus in Monday Morning Question.9 comments
Back in September, I took Kiddo#3 to a birthday part at a classmate’s home, and while there, I thought, “God? When I get to Heaven, this is how I want my house to look.”
Jesus said that in Heaven there were many mansions, so I thought it would be fun to share where we’re all going to live once we get there.
On earth, of course, our dream homes are limited by certain factors such as distance to family, cost, the fact that the locale you want doesn’t exist, and the need to commute to a job or drive into town to get groceries. I’m presuming Heaven will have none of those needs. (I’m willing to be proven wrong, of course.)
This house, for what it’s worth, was surrounded by woods. It was a two-story log-cabin style building, and you walked in to find cathedral ceilings and a central fireplace. The central fireplace is very important to me because it makes a house feel homier in my mind.
The bedroom upstairs was a loft, half the house. The kitchen was tucked under the stairway. There were hardwood floors and as far as I could tell, it had great acoustics. (Which could be either a blessing or a curse when I take real violin lessons in Heaven. Apparently violins don’t make sounds in Heaven until you’re at least at Suzuki Level Three, and that’s because God loves us. But I digress. There are very talented musicians in my life whom I would hope would play sometimes when they visited.)
I’d put it near a smallish-size lake where I could take out a kayak in the mornings, and in the lake I’d have a floating dock as well so I could swim out there and back again, or just lie on the water rocking with the lapping wavelets. And of course, there’d be easy access to a stable where I’d have my horse boarded.
I had a dream once where I saw my guardian angel’s home (that was cool.) In my novel Seven Archangels: Annihilation, the archangel Gabriel keeps a library. Saraquael has a tiny home that’s crammed with books and cats (and as a funny aside, the woman whose home I patterned it after recognized it when she read the book. She said it was fine if Saraquael lived with her.) In The Guardian, Tabris had a sparsely-furnished one-room log cabin above the frost line in a mountain range.
Now it’s your turn: if you had carte blanche for designing your own home, what would it look like? Location? (Or would it be on wheels so you could move your castle around?) Climate? Size? Furnishings? Special amenities that you’d have to have otherwise it wouldn’t be Heaven?
How a saint spends his day, and prayer request updates February 22, 2009
Posted by philangelus in religion.add a comment
Over at Happy Catholic, Julie has a quote from St. Augustine about his daily responsibilities. What does your day planner look like when you’re a saint?
The turbulent have to be corrected, the faint-hearted cheered up, the weak supported; the Gospel’s opponents need to be refuted, its insidious enemies guarded against; the unlearned need to be taught, the indolent stirred up, the argumentative checked; the proud must be put in their place, the desperate set on their feet, those engaged in quarrels reconciled; the needy have to be helped, the oppressed to be liberated, the good to be encouraged, the bad to be tolerated; all must be loved.
A prayer request update: Baby Faith Hope (with anencephaly) was born on Thursday and she’s GORGEOUS! Her photos are posted on the anencephaly support group and over at her weblog. Thank you for all your prayers and please keep praying that her mom has lots of time with her.
Another prayer request update: remember I asked for prayers for a family that had lost its health insurance? The miraculous occurred, and health insurance appeared from figuratively out of the blue, from a place which had denied it before many many times. Apparently a great number of good people got together and made it happen. Thank you so much for all your prayers.
A third prayer request update: I still haven’t caught the injured stray in the back yard. She comes to me from out of the woods when I call. She will rub her face against my leg. She will eat out of a dish that I’m holding in my hands (growling the whole time) but she will not set foot in the humane trap no matter what I bait it with (purina, tuna, catnip…) I’m going to talk to the shelter’s veteran trappers to see if there’s anything more I can do. The cat’s leg is almost definitely broken (in my non-veterinarian opinion) because of the angle of the bend. She can’t put any weight on it, but she’s moving faster now.
And that’s our brief update. Thanks all for your prayers and come back tomorrow for the Monday Morning Question. (Which means, it’s time to think up a question…)
And Creationism wins! February 20, 2009
Posted by philangelus in sarcasm.1 comment so far
more lol celebs!
The Literary Pause February 20, 2009
Posted by philangelus in The New Novel, writing.1 comment so far
I’ve hit that point in ♥My Book♥ where I’m going to slow down. I’ve done 43,000 words in about 40 days. It’s nice progress for me, about half a novel.
I’m a seat-of-the-pants writer, meaning I give folks like Amy Deardon heart palpitations because although I know where I’m going, I don’t know all the steps I’m going to take to get there. Frequently I end a scene and think, “Okay, what do we need next? What follows naturally?”
At some point in every book I’ve written, I’ve hit a wall, at which point I take a pause. It might be a week. It might be a few rather intense days of banging my head against a problem. It might be a couple of years (oops.) What it generally means when I stop cold is that there’s something I need to learn before I can complete the book.
Ninety percent of writing takes place in your subconscious. Well, my subconscious; I can’t talk about those who devise a road map before they set down the first word. But a SOTP writer is whirling things in her brain as she’s writing, incorporating everything she sees into her story.
For example, while I’m still trying desperately to trap that injured stray cat, my protagonist reverberates against my heart as I’m calling “Kitty-kitty!” and I realize something about my protagonist and something about my little injured stray love. Abruptly it’s obvious that my protagonist needs to be feeding a stray, what that action says about her, and how the feeding of a stray cat is going to emblematize another relationship in the story.
Of course, you won’t read that directly in the text (only if you read it right here, or maybe in someone’s doctoral dissertation about me in fifty years) but your unconscious will pick up the subtext behind a pair of kitty bowls tucked behind the garbage cans.
What happens next needs to be very tightly-plotted, but more than that (I suspect) I need to learn something. My subconscious knows I’m not ready to write it, so it pauses.
I did this during Scavengers, when I took a two week break and wrote “The Girl You Remember” and “Mechanics.” I did this in between the last five pages of The Guardian
As I place my stray cat under the protagonist’s front steps, and as I fiddle with parts of what I’ve poured out, I’m wondering what (either boogey-man or instructor) is going to leap out of the closet.
Check back in a few days to see whether the progress bar starts moving again.
