Drat That Cat!

I was supposed to be able to sleep in today. You know, no alarm clock, sweet dreams and all that. But promptly at 7 A.M. my dear fat cat, Buttercup, decided she had waited long enough for breakfast. She cried outside my door for five minutes before I finally let her in and hopped back into bed. Then she cried at the foot of the bed. I pulled the covers over my ears, but she refused to be ignored. She promptly knocked over my glass of water next to the bed and then thumped me on the head. Hard.

I can recognize a losing battle, so I dragged myself out of bed once again to make the long (yawn) trek to the basement to feed the starving, fat cat. When I reached the bottom of the stairs I was greeted by a pile of dirty socks not so neatly stacked in front of the laundry room door and the very large lid of the litter box upside down in the middle of the room. Both are probably compliments of this cat, Angel- who, by the way, does not live up to her name.



When Angel was younger I would come home from work each day to a pile of dirty socks stacked right in front of the entryway door. It must be too much of an effort in her middle age to drag them up two half-flights of stairs. The laundry room door will have to do. As for the litter box lid, Angel delights in scaring the fur off Buttercup - especially when she's in the litter box. More than once I've seen her whack the living daylights out of Buttercup's tail as it sticks out of the box. Buttercup probably jumped high enough to knock the lid off. I have no idea how it got in the middle of the room. Must have been some party.

Back to Buttercup. I decided that since I'm up it would be a good time to get some writing done. House is quiet. Kids are still in bed. Perfect. Except the fat cat decides she still needs attention. Meow. In my lap. Meow. Down to the floor. Meow. In my lap. Meow... you get the picture. It's very hard to concentrate on a new story line with 15 1/2 pounds of feline in your face. Thankfully, all that exercise has now worn her out. She is napping at my feet, and she'll probably stay in that spot for the rest of the day.

Time to get back to the manuscript...

Buried...

Coming soon, to a blog near you... a new post!

Sorry! I'm buried in school work. I'll get back on the blog bandwagon as soon as I can. Have a good week!


Nora

Timing is Everything...

It's true, isn't it? Whether it's a job search, an accepted or rejected manuscript, or events in our everyday lives, timing plays a major role.

For instance...

Today is Sunday. Normally I arrive at church at 9:29 for a 9:30 rehearsal -I'm an accompanist and my husband plays the bass and trombone. I had just sat down on the piano bench when the music director called down from the sound booth, "Hey Nora, I think Tim's playing today."

Excellent timing! (think I). Not that I don't enjoy playing. I do, but it's a rare Sunday indeed when I get to take a break.

I decide to use my extra hour to knock off a few items on my 'to do' list for the day. I head to the van, make a few stops on the way to the house, then pull into the drive.

The 3 weeks before and the first week of school is rough on the inside of my van. It begins to think it's a truck, a kitchen, and a dining room table. I've got 30 minutes left before I head back to church, so I thought it would be nice to surprise hubby with a fresh, dusted, cleaned and vacuumed inside of the van. He would like that. I set to work, and when I finished I had to admit it looked pretty good. You think the van would appreciate that. But no. It decided to whack me in the head and face with the back hatch.

I texted hubby to let him know what had happened and that I would pick him up after church, then I headed to the freezer for an ice pack. I'm going to be pretty colors. Did I mention that school pictures are this week?

Timing is everything...

Busses and Children and Spiders - Oh My!

Today was the first day of school.

I am, by nature, a night owl. I love walking in the neighborhood late at night, and I do my best writing sitting under the stars on my deck in the wee hours of the morning. Three A.M. bedtime or later isn't unusual for me during summer or Christmas break.

Then schools starts again. It takes me a good three weeks to turn my internal clock around. I try to do it before school starts, but it never works. Six-thirty feels mighty early when your brain only shut off a few hours before. It doesn't turn back on again before 9.

I left the house at 7:15 with the plan to be at school early. And I would have been, if I hadn't driven to the wrong school. That's right. I went to a completely different building - one where I don't even teach this year. In my defense, it was a logical thing for my sleep-deprived brain to do since I started in that building last year. I didn't realize my mistake until I was sitting at the light with my signal on, waiting to turn into the parking lot. Hopefully, no one noticed. Unfortunately, my detour put me behind a school bus. School busses are rarely on time the first week.

I did make it to my morning building. I was greeted by this:


I am thankful the resident wasn't visible.


I made it through the rest of the morning and afternoon without further incident. The caffeine IV probably helped. My students were cute and fun and eager to get started. It's going to be a good year.

The Joys of Sitemeter

This might sound funny, but I just LOVE Sitemeter! Geeky, I know, but I get a kick out of seeing where all of you are from. Who would of known that someone besides Mom would visit my blog?

I've had visitors from all over the United States - except Hawaii and Utah, and I have visitors from our neighbor - Canada. It's fun to see the different country's flags appear on the list. Some of the more recent ones who've visited are from South Korea and Germany. I've had visitors from Great Britain, France, Italy, Trinidad, South Africa, Denmark, and Japan - to name a few.

It really is a small world! Please leave a comment or a simple hello when you visit. Let me know where you're from. And most of all, thanks for stopping by. Ya'll come back now!

Vowels and Hearsay...

I have no idea if this is true, but I heard that in Arab schools vowels are removed from the text once the student learns to read.

I wondered what that would do to the readability of the English language. Would it improve? Think of all the different pronunciations we have for a single word - read, for instance. Hmmm... if it was spelled rd, it could be read, red, rod, road, rude... Reading would come down to deciphering context clues. On the other hand, there would be no more diphthongs, vowel-blends, short and long vowel structures and such for all the little primary kids to master... And think about what removing vowels would do to the page count of a novel!

I wondered again what it would look like. So here's something for you:

Mry hd a lttl lmb, ts flce ws wht s snw,
nd vrywhr tht Mry wnt, th lmb ws sr t g.

Did you get it? Try this:

W hld ths trths t b slf-vdnt, tht ll mn r crtd ql, tht thy r ndwd b thr Crtor wth crtn nlnbl Rghts, tht mng ths r Lf, Lbrty, nd th prst f Hppnss. Tht t scr ths rghts, Gvrnmnts r nstttd mng Mn, drvng thr jst pwrs frm th cnsnt f th gvrnd...

A little harder?

As I look at it I'm realizing my son already writes likes this. It's called text-messaging!

Percy Jackson & the Olympians: The Lightening Thief

For all of you who are Percy Jackson fans, you can watch the movie trailer here!