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Idle essays

A Night of Mares…

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haywain-1What a weird night.

Had a great time at the Thanksgiving party yesterday afternoon and evening. Got home not very late, around 9 or 10 p.m. Fed the dogs, let them out, went to bed.

Along about 4:30 a.m., Ruby started twitching in her sleep. Pretty clearly she was having a dogmare. Eventually she settles down and I think now it’s back to sleep.

And so it seemed, for about five minutes. Then she begins to utter little hmh! noises.

This dog’s vocalizations are eerily human. They often have exactly the intonation that human speech would have, with question marks and exclamation points and periods and dot-dot-dots… This noise sounds just like the hmh! you and I would make when contemplating something that mildly surprises and interests, or some set of facts that contradicts an assumption.

Sometimes if I ignore her when she wakes in the middle of the night, she’ll go back to sleep. But no. This keeps on. Then she goes down to the end of the bed, where they get lifted on and off.

It was late when they got fed, so I figure she probably needs to go out. But once she’s on the floor, it becomes evident that “let me out” is not what “hmh!” means. The instant her feet hit the ground, she goes BATSHIT!

She roars down the hall, barking furiously. Cassie follows her. I hobble after them.

Nothing in the house. She’s at the back door. None of the motion-sensitive lights are on, so I figure it’s probably OK to open the door and let her out.

She flies out the door IN FULL HOWLING BAY!

Yes. Corgis can make a sound a lot like baying. It’s the final level before they start to scream, and this particular specimen of corgidom does scream when something gets her mad enough.

She chases into the yard in an utter frenzy, and now Cassie kicks in and she charges out there emitting her fullest-throated make-my-day! bark. They are both ready for bear, and Ruby apparently thinks the bear is in the yard.

I run barefooted into the yard behind them, thinking damn, I should’ve at least grabbed a steak knife out of the kitchen drawer. I’m unarmed and not what you’d call dressed. The only thing between me and whateveritis would be two twenty-pound shepherd dogs.

But once we rounded the corner, it became obvious that no one and nothing was in the yard. Apparently no one was in front, either, because both dogs came to call (they will not, if they’re seriously distracted) and Ruby quieted down as soon as she patrolled the side yard and found no threat.

So THAT was weird.

Back to bed. Back to sleep.

Between the waning hours of night and the waxing hours of dawn, it was my turn to have a vivid dream. Worthy of a Twilight Zone episode it was, fully plotted, set in a clearly developed scene, even filmed in color. A sort of Hieronymus Bosch color, but unimistakably not the usual dreamtime b/w.

That was even weirder. First the dog has a nightmare that persuades her something real is out there. Then I have a nightmare that persuades me I’m trapped in a 1960s television show.

It’s a great story idea, though. I may try to write it up. Very strange.

Fourth Sunday…

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There’s just one, count it (1) reason I get out of the sack at this unholy hour on a Sunday morning: the amazing music program down at the Cult HQ. Our choir director hires a passel of professional singers with whom the rest of us are privileged to sing along. This group, our “chamber choir,” also sings at least one piece unmolested by us amateurs, and the effect is awe-inspiring.

For reasons that escape my mortal comprehension, the Powers That Be have decided that once a month our entire tribe must sing at the 9 a.m. service, meaning we have to show up down there at 8 a.m. (We normally sing at a decent hour: 11:00.) I sorta hoped this would go away after they’d tried it for a year. But no. Apparently they love it! 😀

It’s not actually getting up that I could do without, because of course the dawgs are raring to go at 5 a.m., summer or winter. Well. In the summer they’re up at 4.

It’s the banging around to get dressed and get out of the house. Now that I’m old, it seems to take me an inordinately long time to get up and get going. And when you’re old, too, you’re sot in your ways and do not wish to disturb those ways once a month. Or ever.

The dogs have to be fed. When Charley the Golden Retriever is here, as he happens to be today, that project turns into a PROJECT. Two strategies can be engaged:

  1. The human locks the corgis in the back bedroom. It then prepares the corgi meals, distracts Charley briefly, grabs the food, and RUNS to the back of the house, tears into the bedroom ahead of the retriever, and slams the door behind it. Once the food is placed in front of the corgis, the human sneaks out of the bedroom, returns to the kitchen, and sets the retriever’s kibble in front of him. OR…
  2. The human prepares the corgi food, dumps a cup of kibble in the Charley bowl, locks the retriever in the backyard  with the bowl of kibble, and then sets the dishes of corgi food on the kitchen floor in something like the normal manner.

The problem with (1) is that it’s a gigantic hassle.

The problem with (2) is that Charley vacuums his food much faster than the corgis, who he believes possess BETTER food than his (he’s right about that…), and then he tries to break down the back door so as to get into the house and get their food.

As you can imagine, this is a chore I’m not in any hurry to take up. Certainly not as dawn is barely breaking.

Then of course the usual pile of e-mails has to be attended to — this morning only 50 unread messages are sitting on the server. That doesn’t count the 127 “notifications” from Twitter, the 53 from Google+, the 17 from Facebook, and the 23 automatically routed to the “trash” folder. This is not something you really want to do over morning coffee.

Cassie and Charley are having shitfits. Somebody must be prowling around out there. Apparently they’re in front: probably someone walking their dog up the front sidewalk. I’m sure my neighbor Terri is thrilled at having not one but TWO dogs barking and howling outside her windows at 7 in the morning.

Cassie just barks on general principles. She doesn’t care to go out and run around in the cold, so she stands in the kitchen and splits my ears. Sometimes she doesn’t bother to get up: she just reclines on the floor and yaps. I think she thinks it’s conversation.

When I have to wash my hair early in the morning, there’s not enough time for it to dry enough for me to set it on hot rollers. And setting my hair is the last thing I feel like doing in by the light of a sun that hasn’t cleared the horizon. So I either have to braid it, which makes me look like WT, or I have to clip it back off my face and let it cascade down my  back, which makes people wonder what I’m trying to prove.

Then I have to paint my face. I really don’t care to look in the mirror at all, and you can be damn sure I hate looking in the mirror at 6 or 6:30 in the morning! It is just too early to work up the nerve for that chore.

As usual, all the old-lady fiascos occur. None of them are things I feel like coping with the first goddamn thing in the morning.

This morning, for example, I lost my glasses. Took them off to pull a shirt over my head, put them down SOMEwhere. And then…couldn’t find them. I searched and searched and searched and hated searching and hated searching and hated searching. Believe me, THAT is a hassle I hate at any time of day, and first thing in the morning it is hated with élan.

Finally found them where I’d put them down: in a bowl I use to hold make-up.

Naturally. Who wouldn’t lay their glasses down in a make-up tray?

Well, the computer says it’s after 7:30. Gotta go find a pair of shoes (probably in the freezer, hm?), wrestle the dogs into the house, find the car keys (no doubt in the pantry), and make my way down to the church.

Halloween Hoot!

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What a great Halloween Hubbub last night!

Like other gentrifying neighborhoods, on trick-or-treat night the the ‘hood attracts families from the surrounding down-at-the-heels apartments and decrepit single-family tracts. Parents sense the area is safer for the kids, and they know the residents will hand out better candies and treats less likely to be laced with meth or razor blades. So they bring their costumed babes in by the truckload

They are SO cute!

The favorite costumes this year seem to be ninjas and (oddly) Dorothy of the Wizard of Oz. And princesses. Princesses are big. 😀

One little girl showed up in a historically perfect flapper dress, turquoise with swinging layers of fringes. It was VERY pretty and amazingly cute. Really, unless her mom made it (which would’ve taken half the year!), I can’t even imagine what the parents must have paid for it. Now if she’ll just not grow much for the next eight or ten years, she can wear it to the senior prom!

The neighbors here like to bring a table and chairs out front to greet the little spooks and fashion plates. I spent the evening across the street with the Accountants. Mr. Accountant brings out a portable firepit, the kind with a screen and lid on it, and lights up a Coleman lantern inside it. It puts out a little heat, but not enough to catch fire to any costumes.

You never SAW so many little kids in your life! They were all well-behaved, and their costumes were grand. Often the ones that were obviously home-made were the best: one little girl had on a simple sheet cut and stitched so it would flow diaphanously. It didn’t cover her head — it was more like a white, GHOSTLY floor-length tunic. It was neat.

The Accountants had made a Costco run and bought 150 candies. These ran out by 7 p.m. Since no one pays in cash anymore, we didn’t have pennies or nickels or dimes to hand out. So that kinda shut us down. Next year we’ll have to get more loot.

One nice thing about having everyone sitting out in front of their houses — besides the opportunity to socialize — is that it cuts way, WAY down on the vandalism. People are a lot less likely to smash your pumpkins, tear up your plants, or egg your cars if they think they can be seen. Plus I think it’s a lot more fun to sit outside and watch the kids frolicking around than it is to have to get up and traipse to the door every five minutes.

Halloween has gotten to be my favorite holiday. I really used to dislike it — the whole trick-or-treat meme strikes me as kind of extortionate, and I resent having to buy candy whose leftovers I’ll never eat and that I feel ethically opposed to donating to the poor. However, the idea of sitting outside to join the party changes things altogether. Instead of a nuisance, lately Halloween has become one big party.

When I was a little kid, I used to adore Halloween. My mother put the eefus on that, though. One Halloween, when I was all ready to go and amazingly excited (I was kind of an Aspergery little kid and didn’t make friends, so had a pretty isolated, boring life), my mother got mad at me for some minor thing — I don’t even remember what it was and probably didn’t understand what her problem was then. To get back at me, she announced that I would not be allowed to go trick-or-treating.

That was so upsetting that I never liked Halloween after that. I think I went out the following year, didn’t have a very good time, and then after that just stayed in my room.

So that’s probably part of the reason that as an adult I disliked having hordes of kids show up at my door demanding treats…or else.

However, now that Halloween is an old-folks’ party, it has a whole new appeal! 🙂

 

Beateous Evening

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Thunder grumbling in the east, and this in the evening sky:

rainbow2015

My little camera doesn’t do it justice. It was a beautiful sky, just lovely. And now the distant showers have cooled the air into the low 80s. All the doors and windows are open, ushering in the first fresh air of the fall. At last the hot summer is over, the summer we live through by huddling inside air-conditioned boxes.

The air is very still and humid, so every fan in the house is on, trying to move thge proposed fresh air through. But that notwithstanding, it’s happy.

The Incredible Handiness of a Spare Driver’s License…

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My new driver’s license just came in the mail.

In Arizona, you can ask for (and get) a spare driver’s license by going online and filling out a little form. Very handy! They don’t want to give you an extra when you go in for a new license, but they’ll send you one after the fact.

Right away, it goes into the car: an ash tray is the perfect stash.

I really dislike lugging a purse around. Often I don’t — visiting a friend, going to choir practice, whatever: why haul the kitchen sink with you?

So I don’t. O’course, that means every time I go someplace where I don’t have to buy something, I put myself at risk of arrest. All it would take is a fender-bender for the cops to haul me off.

Why not carry the plastic license around in a pocket? Two reasons:

a) Women’s clothes often have no pickets; and
b) I can’t remember my name, much less where I last put something. Does anyone seriously expect me not to lose a driver’s license doing that?

True, hiding it in the car also poses a degree of risk: whoever steals my car gets my driver’s license, too. But phbthhphtbbttt! He who steals my car or my driver’s license steals junk.

Typically, if I need to go to a store after, say, church or choir practice, I’ll hide the purse under some junk and leave it in the car. One nice thing about a van with smoked windows is that it has a lot of places people can’t see from the outside. So it’s six o’ one, half-a-dozen of the ′tother. Actually, more than half-a-dozen. If they steal the car and get my purse, they also get three credit cards, a debit card, a Medicare card, two insurance cards, and a phone.

It’s a lot easier to replace one driver’s card than all that trash.

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In other news, Amazon has posted Fire-Rider 15: The Weaver. Click on the link to the right to access that.

These stories really, really need some reviews. I think I’ll drop the price on the first half-dozen of them to 99 cents, by way of making them a little more tempting. How’s about picking up a couple and scribbling a few lines about the things?

Possibly of more entertaining interest, our Racy Books will start going online the first part of October. I have three more Fire-Rider installments to get off my desk, and then we’ll start publishing about 10 erotic frolics each month.

At least, that’s our goal. Four authors have joined me in this endeavor. We’ll be publishing the things under a single pseudonym: Roberta Stuart. Partly to build name recognition — if all four of us were scribbling under different names, we couldn’t get as many books out under any of our names, and partly (of course) to maintain a veil of privacy. Some of us have employers who might frown at a side gig that entailed writing racy novelettes, and some would  just as soon not have our mothers or our pastors find out what we’re up to.

Watch this space!

Roberta Stuart is a university professor who has a secret life. When she’s not in a classroom, a library, or a faculty meeting, she’s “a member of the country club.” And she’s got friends in low places—lots of them.
Roberta Stuart is a university professor who has a secret life. When she’s not in a classroom, a library, or a faculty meeting, she’s “a member of the country club.” And she’s got friends in low places—lots of them.

 

Calling on the Muse…and all that

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Muse_reading_Louvre_CA2220Wannabe a writer? Or an artiste? Or the 21st century’s answer to Bach? Well, all you have to do is summon the Muse, eh?

LOL! Personally, I’ve never been much of an acolyte of the Muses…inspiration lurks in the “Pay to the Order of…” line of a well-written check. But some of us revel in the emotional tug of a mystical impetus to inspiration.

The “Muse” answers to one call: hard work. Work at learning one’s art. Work at practicing it. Work at perfecting it.

Over at Writers Plain & Simple, a student’s tyro article inspired (heh!) a squib on the subject, you might enjoy.

Meanwhile, not an awful lot of Musing got done around here today. Book 14 of Fire-Rider went up (to the right). Tweets got twittered. Correspondence got sent to authors. A couple of authors got paid (one belatedly!). A meeting got met. The e-book builder got discussed with. The mess that is my computer filing system got a start on a cleanup. None of it what you’d call “inspired.”

Oh well.