Friday Fun (of a very different kind)

Noni and I spent some time thinking about an appropriate Friday Fun video for today. See, the thing is, we met twenty years ago in the alto section of our local Cathedral Choir. We were part of the Enchanted Altos, a bunch of gals who had perhaps watched the movie Enchanted April one too many times, and who, on Thursday nights after choir practice, could routinely be found in The Morgue, our name for the cocktail lounge that was closest to the practice room. I still hang with The Altos; in fact, they're probably my closest  friends. (Don't blush too hard. You know who you are.) And it all happened because we share a love for choral music, particularly music that was written as part of the Catholic liturgy.

Photo: http://www.dreamstime.com/easter-arrangement-imagefree76083

So today is Good Friday, and if that doesn't get a liturgical freak excited, nothing will. There's a rich history of song and text and ritual that is associated with this day. Given all that, it didn't seem appropriate to post one of our normal somewhat irreverent and (usually) funny videos. Instead, Noni and I each picked an example of music that is a necessary part of Good Friday. You know how you all have songs or bands that are inextricably linked to certain situations? Like, it's not a day at the beach without a little Van Halen or the Red Hot Chili Peppers or, geez, I don't even know what the kids these days would listen to on the beach. Anyway, you get the idea. 

First, here's an arrangement of the Stabat Mater by Guisseppe Tartini (1692 - 1770), a poem which is a long and somewhat Gothic take on what Mary might have said while her son Jesus was hanging on the cross. I love singing this piece...in Latin, because the words in English are just too dark. Anyway, this is hands down my favorite Good Friday piece.

And from Noni, with love, is this piece by Antonio Lotti (1667 - 1740). It's called Crucifixus, and this setting is for six voices (I think). He wrote different arrangements of this same text for five, six, eight and ten voices (meaning vocal parts). This one is my favorite, and it's performed by the choral ensemble Noni used to sing with before she moved to Seattle and became one of the Enchanted Altos.

However you choose to celebrate Easter and the beginning of spring, whether it's a sunrise service or some quality time in the garden, I wish you the very best in this season of new life and hope.
Peace,
Liv

New ways to waste time.

One of the biggest challenges to finishing a novel (or a short story, or a blog post) is finding the time to sit down and write. And then, even when you have the time, there are other traps. Like, in the olden days writers would stare out the window and daydream, their pencils or pens suspended over dog-eared spiral notebooks. Now, they can toggle between tabs on their web browsers, or maybe play a quick game of mah jong or Freecell, all in the name of finding just the right word or planning the next plot twist.

Because really, eBay makes a great thesaurus. And nothing is better than Facebook for helping you understand your character's goals and motivations. My own personal favorite and newest obsession is pinterest. I can spend a ridiculous amount of time looking at all the pretty pictures. Time that I've carved out of the rest of my life, when I'm not working my full time job or running the kids from swim practice to cello lessons or whatever. Time that I should be actually writing.


I justify it by telling myself I'm doing research, looking for pictures that inspire my newest work-in-progress...on which very little actual progress is happening, although I do have a nice collection of pictures that might inspire some writing if I ever stop looking at pictures long enough to actually write something. And just so you know I'm not fooling, here's a link to my Storyboard.

I think you'll agree that pictures are pretty, and I hope someday their story will get told! 
Peace,
Liv

Oy To The World

So on a discussion list I follow, someone posted the following question:

What's your favorite Christmas song or album/CD?

Hands down, for me, it's the "Oy To The World" CD by The Klezmonauts. What, you don't automatically associate Christmas with Klezmer music? Really?

Well, okay. I'll grant you it's not an automatic link. They go together like, maybe, peanut butter and potato chips. Different, and not to everyone's taste, but yummy if you're into it. In fact, I like this CD so well that I just went to Amazon and downloaded a copy to this laptop, because it was easier than going through our CD racks in the living room and finding the disc. Oh Amazon, you're just so...

Which brings me to the real point of this rant. Geez, but it is easy to buy shit off Amazon. Maybe too easy. Like, I'm wandering around the internet and I read a review of a book that sounds appealing. I make a couple clicks and get a sample sent to my Kindle. Then, a month or so later, I'm sitting at the kid's swim practice or standing at the bus stop or waiting for a delivery at work, and I read the sample. It is good! Click! Bingo! I've bought the book - and somehow they don't post the price where I can see it when I click the "buy it now" button.

And that's the craziest part. I'm such a book-whore that I try (tried?) to avoid paying full price whenever possible. I buy used or check things out from the library or wait for the paperback. Sorry, authors. Console yourself with knowing that while I might cheap out on the individual sale, I make up for it in volume (says the girl with multiple copies of most of what Charlaine Harris has ever written). I try to tell myself that there's a novelty factor involved, and that when I get used to it, I'll use more judgement about what goes on my Kindle or into my Amazon Cloud. Someday...

So here's a link (I think...you might need to copy and paste it into your browser) to The Klezmonauts on Amazon, in case all of this has inspired you to check them out.

http://www.amazon.com/Oy-World-Klezmonauts/dp/B00000FXN2/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1323182898&sr=8-1

And if you're additionally inspired, leave a recommendation in the comments for other Christmas music I should check out.

Peace,

Liv

Why is there a drum kit in my basement?

I started out with the best intentions.  It was Monday morning, after all, and Dear Daughter was up till midnight finishing her homework.  You might be asking yourself why she didn't start her homework sooner than 7pm on Sunday evening.  Good question.  Likely because she's in 8th grade, and I trust her to be able to organize herself when it comes to that kind of thing.  Maybe I'm misguided, but that's how it is.

So because she was short on sleep and I wanted to be nice, I volunteered to iron her khaki uniform pants.  The dog and I went down to the basement to plug in the iron, and I noticed the drum kit.  Surrounded by gear, like amps and mic stands and a small mixing board.  Huh.  Wonder how long that's been there.

Now, it's not as unusual as it might be, since the Dear Husband is in two bands.  It's just been, like, a week and a half since one of them rehearsed at our house.  Which means the drum kit has been set up for at least a week and a half.  Huh.  Hadn't noticed it till now.  The basement is big, and all, and the drum kit was pushed up against the pool table, but still.  It's hard to miss.

Any good story has conflict, right?  So here's mine.  I was ironing away when I smelled the distinctive aroma of dog poop.  Seems Puppy doesn't like to do his bidness in the rain.  We live in Seattle.  He needs to get over that.  I threw him out back (not literally) and went on a poop hunt.  I found it BEHIND the drum kit and UNDER the pool table, which is why, at 8 am on a Monday morning, I was crawling over rock and roll detritus to scoop the poops from under the pool table.  Almost got scalped by a cymbal.


And from that I know that it's going to be a good week, because, really, there's nowhere to go but up.
Peace,
Liv

Da Bus

So every Sunday I work at my real job.  It's less than ideal, but it must be done.  I take the bus to work whenever I can, and I gotta tell you that the #75 on a Sunday morning is worth more than the price of admission.

There's a cast of regulars.  The bus runs down along Lake Washington, and every Sunday this summer Mr. Fisherdude got on. He was a big guy in hip waders who carried a fishing pole and a tackle box.  God only knows what he ever caught out there.  There's the Black Gentleman With The Cane who smiles and says 'hi' when he gets on.  There's also the Surly Punkrock Dude who gets off in front of City People's Mercantile.  Almost every week he nearly misses his stop because he's asleep.  He hasn't been there the last couple weeks.  I wonder what's up?

Today the bus was busier than normal, and there was one Chatty Cathy behind me who was telling her unfortunate seatmate all kinds of stuff.  I had her pretty well tuned out until I heard her say, "I was going to go to _______, but when I went out to my car, my son had let the air out of two of my tires."

Really?

"Yeah, see, I get my license back in three weeks, and every time I get close, I get pulled over and the judge re-sets the date."

Uh - huh.

"He was just protecting me."

And all the rest of us, sister.  I hope she rides again next week.  I'll pay more attention.
Peace,
Liv

The Great Chicken Experiment

This is the last piece for my humor writing class.  Next I'll try to summarize what she actually taught us!>

The great chicken experiment is over.

Six years ago, it seemed like a good idea.  The Son was in kindergarten, and for their science project his class had eggs in an incubator.  The theory was, the eggs would hatch, and then the baby chicks would need a home.  I volunteered.  The Husband LOOKED at me.  Then he shrugged.  Three baby chicks came home with us on Good Friday, 2006.

Shadow was a big Barred Rock hen.  Old John that used to live next door told us she’d be a good layer.  She was a bossy old bitch, but knew about laying eggs.  Sunshine and Acorn were Auricanas, Martha Stewart’s preferred breed.  They laid cute little aqua blue and green eggs.  Sunshine had, well, yellow feathers.  What can I say?  The kids were little and they made fairly obvious name choices.

Acorn was a pretty marbled brown and black hen.  She was our fragile flower.  Because of Acorn, I know there’s an avian Vet down on Aurora Avenue.  I know that the staff at the Animal ER in Lake City are friendly and caring…and don’t laugh outright in your face when you bring them a bird in severe respiratory distress.  Hey, it was almost Easter and I didn’t want the kids traumatized by a chicken who wouldn’t rise again in three days.  I now know it’s possible to spend hundreds of dollars keeping a chicken alive.  If you’re crazy.

People who actually know about animals do call me crazy.  Like, my sister-in-law who runs a stables thought I was nuts when we brought Acorn out to her while we were going on vacation.  Acorn needed steroid and antibiotic shots, and I had to teach Auntie C how to give them.  You do this, and you do this, I said.  She LOOKED at me.  Then she shrugged.  And gave the shots.

In my defense, a dear friend once told me about someone her mother knew who spent hundreds of dollars keeping an ailing hen alive.  Not only that, but once it died she paid for an autopsy and then had it cremated.  Its ashes are in an urn in her living room.  Now that’s crazy.

One night in the spring of 2009, I got a hysterical call from the Husband while I was at work.  Once I got him calmed down a little, I realized that he was telling me a neighbor’s dog had broken into the chicken coop and played Chicken Frisbee with Sunshine, Shadow and Acorn.  Shit.  They were all dead.

So that was our first real learning experience as chicken owners.  I mean, besides the fact that chicken poop STINKS.  The kids had a life and death lesson.  And I had a reality check.  No more spending big bucks keeping a chicken alive.  After talking with other chicken owners, it seemed that they all had a dirty dog story.  Getting chomped by other critters was an occupational hazard of being a chicken.

The back yard was a sadder place without the girls.  I missed the way they’d strut around, turning up where I least expected them.  When you talk to a chicken, they’ll cock their heads, as if they are the source of all common sense and you, verbose ape, are clucking nonsense.  They made me laugh.  When I raised the possibility of getting new birds, the Husband LOOKED at me.  And then he shrugged.  That Easter, there were three new baby chicks under a warmer light in our basement.

Lacey, Eight Ball and Beulah Mae were a different breed.  We didn’t give them the run of the yard, hoping to keep their presence a secret from the neighborhood dogs.  Beulah Mae was a Buff Orpington, a big yellow bird who knew her way around a nesting box.  Lacy was a fussy little Lace Winged Wyandotte, and Eight Ball was another Barred Rock.  They lived in their coop, with an eight-foot run in front of it.  We moved the coop so we could see them from the kitchen window, but they never had the same sense of family as our first three birds.  And they NEVER had the same vet bills as our first three birds.

We were happy chicken owners, and would have kept them up, but this summer the neighborhood raccoons figured out that dinner lived in our coop.  They’d break in and snatch one.  The Husband would reinforce the coop.  They’d figure out another way in.  The Husband would fix it.  And so on.  Our last girl, Eight Ball, tangled with a raccoon yesterday.  That’s a battle a chicken will always lose.  We hope she’s happy in chicken heaven with all her chicken sisters.  The Husband can’t wait to take the coop to the dump.

Rough Cut

I'm taking a writing class, Make Your First 50 Pop!, by Christine Fairchild (http://editordevil.blogspot.com/).  It is an on-line class, using the Yahoo Groups format, and I've found the other students to be accomplished and enthusiastic.  It has been a lot of fun.   

The idea is that before the class began we all sent Christine, an editor with 20 years experience and a helluva good writing teacher, the first 50 pages of a nearly-finished work.  Then, over the course of the class we've been submitting sections of those 50 pages to illustrate the different lessons she sends out.  At the end she'll send us back the 50 pages we submitted, along with her editorial comments.

I think my first mistake was sending in 50 pages of a work that's not quite finished.  Actually, it's not nearly finished.  I had it to a stopping place (about 70k words), then let it lie for several months, picked it back up with a bunch of new ideas, and have been reworking it ever since.  The next mistake was reading the lessons she sent us, because by the time I got to lesson 4 I realized I had the whole thing organized wrong.  Oops.

I emailed Christine this morning and she hadn't started working with my first 50 pages, so she was willing to let me send in a revised version.  Which means I have to polish the rough cuts I've made and send it in.  While I'm supposed to be re-writing the ending of another big project.  And working full time.  And it's a holiday weekend. 

Hallelujah!  Worse things could happen to me.

Finding my way

This is a departure, a step towards something exciting and new.  I'm in the process of getting my first book published.  Well, okay, it's a novella, and all that's happened so far is that an editor has read it and emailed me to say she is interested in publishing it if I was willing to change the ending.

Pause.  Change the ending?  Really?  I kinda liked the ending.  On the other hand, I'm a total newbie, and figure I'm open to constructive input.  But I was still clutching, at least until I talked with Shel, one of my beta readers (and sister....who happens to live in LA and work in the entertainment industry).  She pointed out that I'd given it a real Hollywood ending, with the heroine giving up her source of power when she met a good man.  Ick.  I did that?  Oops. 

So I emailed the editor today and proposed a different ending, couching it in terms that suggest I'd still be open for suggestion.  And then I checked my email about 7000 times.  I keep telling myself to drop it off a cliff, be happy they liked it enough to email back, and what will be will be.  And I'll tell myself that again after I go check my email.....