Read for Free. What a Concept!!!

This is so awesome, I can't let it get away without telling everyone. If you like to read, and who doesn't? This is for you.

A friend of mine is a published Science Fiction writer. He's a philospher-physicist, too. Plus, He just published String Theory for Dummies.  Andrew Zimmerman-Jones is a multi-talented author. I'm so glad to know him.Today he sent me a link to a site that is giving away a sample reader for free. No, there are no strings attached. (no pun intended)

I already downloaded my copy and I'm happy as a pig loose in the corn field. Last night while thinking of my New Year's resolutions, one that offered itself to me was, Don't buy any more books until you finish the wall of them you already have! And here is the Universe, so to speak, telling me I'm right.

I don't have to pay money to read, I can read for free. What a gift! Eh?

In case you are curious who the authors may be, take a look at this:

• Laurell K. Hamilton — Divine Misdemeanors
• Seth Godin — Tribes and Linchpin
• Joseph Finder — Vanished
• Cory Doctorow — Makers
• Chris Brogan & Julien Smith — Trust Agents
• Robert J. Sawyer — Wake
• Mitch Joel – Six Pixels of Separation
• Cherie Priest — Boneshaker
• Tara Hunt — The Whuffie Factor
• Scott Sigler — The Rookie
• Seth Harwood — Jack Wakes Up
• J.C. Hutchins — 7th Son: Descent

Without any further to do, I quote from the site that Andrew sent me:

From high adventure to savvy business advice, youll find something special for the special someones on your holiday list — including you. You’re also welcome to share this free sampler with friends and family. Click here to download the In The Nick of Time! holiday sampler — and have the happiest of holidays!"

Now for the picture of the day... the happy pig running loose in the cornfield? She got away.

The boys are now out there searching for her.

They don't know she is back in her crib reading some really good stuff she just downloaded off the internet.

Hope those boys find the link, too!

Migraine and Insomnia

It's 3 o'clock in the morning! I'm an insomniac, and tonight (this morning) it is complicated by a migraine. I've taken all the medicine I could possibly take, that's safe to take, and some herbal tea, too. I'm awake. Head hurts. Laying here in the dark is not an option. All I will do is toss and turn. Some folks stay awake at night worrying or thinking of a million things. When I lay awake, my mind is a blank and I wish that counting sheep as my mother often suggested, would actually work to lull me to sleep.

Therefore I just turn on the light, get up and do something! In this case, all that is involved in getting up, is sitting up, as the laptop is right here with me. I find that if I at least stay in bed, my body keeps the sense of calm and not having to do anything. I play relaxing music to keep a mood of quiet peace, restfulness. But, sometimes those recordings for relaxation can be annoying. Right now, an acoustic guitar is brightly dancing behind the blog screen. So now to find something else.

I've got Peaceful Evening Sunset going now. This is one of those cheap five dollar ones created by an anonymous musician. Not bad. It has the annoying little crickets in the background, but at least they are not prominent. Whatever instrument that is, I find encouraging.That doesn't feel entirely like relaxing. Does it? To be encouraged by the instrument?

Encouraging:  giving courage, confidence or hope

In that case, I suppose that hope would fit the circumstances. I hope the migraine goes away, I hope the insomnia goes away. I don't have much confidence that my hopes will unfold. So perhaps I need courage, itself.

Courage: a quality of spirit that enables you to face danger or pain without showing fear

Oh, I don't know about that one! Would I say that the Peaceful Evening Sunset relaxation musical instrument enables me to face danger, or pain without showing fear. I don't think so. Then, why would I have said I find it encouraging. I will have to re-think this.

I do not feel confident. I do feel hopeful.

Ah Ha! "quality of spirit enables me to face danger or pain without showing fear"

I don't feel in any imminent danger unless it is the heartburn crawling up my throat.  However, if courage helps one to face pain without showing fear, then I think we have it! Well, actually, I don't have much in the way of fear regarding migraines and insomnia. I suppose I would if I needed to get up in three hours and drive to work. Now, that would be dangerous. But, I thankfully, will have the morning to make up for this loss.... I hope. There's that encouraging hope again! I hope no one calls me on the telephone too early. I hope I sleep. I hope the migraine goes... I already mentioned that. Didn't I?

I am definitely facing pain without showing fear. I'm just living with it, without fear, the same as I'm living with the cat sleeping at my feet. It's just there. The insomnia, the migraine, that is. Like the cat. It is just there. The migraine is the most "there" of the three. If I take more medicine, it will knock me out. I will sleep the morning away and wake up sometime after noon. I can't do that. I wont do that!

I have a steadfast rule to never sleep past noon. I used to do it in my twenties if I had stayed up too late with my friends on a fun Saturday night. I would sleep in until the afternoon sun burned a hole in my in the eyes demanding I awaken. Afternoon wake up calls from the sun, ( that same sun everyone loves so much) is not my idea of a good time. It's a day wasted, and a sleep hangover. Which is worse? A day wasted or insomnia? Very simple, the wasted day. Which is worse? a sleep hangover? or a night of productive insomnia! Or even unproductive insomnia counting sheep. I go with the insomnia. I have no fear of insomnia, a little dread of migraines, though.

I've been thinking of adding a new rule to my life: Thou shalt keep track of all insomnia on a calendar and keep track of actual hours slept. That way I can see if I ever catch up to the required 8 hours. If I don't sleep but five hours one night, do I make up for it another? A sleep calendar. Good idea.


Oh! What was that?

A yawn! That's a good sign. Oh, and another one! Very good sign!

Credit for this delightful creation goes to the artist, Jen, of Cat Art Cafe. She has other works of art posted on her site. Go take a look She also sells her beautiful work. You can find them in the form of magnets on E-bay. Since she does so many calico cats she has already captured my attention.

How not to become an author.

I wasn't planning on participating in the National Write a Novel month. Some friends of mine kept referring to NaNoWriMo. I kept wondering, what the heck is that? So I looked it up and I thought... I gotta, at least, try it.

I was feeling quite creative and had a really great character to develop... or so I thought. After about a week, I realized, how can I write about him and his thoughts, habits etc. in thirty days?. They say to write what you know. I know "her" pretty good, I think. But, him? Sorta. So, my creative ego deflated without the steam to keep it going! He was the fire, she was the pot of water, without the two... no steam. Ha!

Realistically, if one is to be serious about writing a "novel", one technically needs to have an outline and have the characters and scenes developed, etc etc. I'm not very well organized. So, getting back to left brain must be in the future for me if this thing is going to take off. New Years resolutions here I come!

Rather than just give up, after "he" disappeared from my consciousness, I decided to continue with what I have spent time developing... "her", the character loosely based on someone I know.

The rules of NaNoWriMo is that you complete 50,000 words... any 50,000 words. There are serious authors who use this opportunity to take all the work they've arranged throughout the year to put their story together. Forced fulfillment maybe? And a few have actually completed and published. Bravo!

So if one already has an outline, characters, scenes, etc. one can apply them towards their participation. At first I thought that would be cheating, but after reading some of the comments by others in their forum, I realized it was common. The whole point is committing to write daily and help the writer to grow. 1666 words a day meets the goal in one month. I figured it out that I could spend one hour a day at average typing speed. However, I forgot to include time for thinking! For the amount of time it takes to go with the creative flow and to go back and read over what you have so far! That takes hours. Good thing I had time available to play with this.

Even with my character, I had to do some major work getting the story to flow even after I dropped her male friend (or whatever he is going to be.friend, brother, lover, soul mate?) See? I didn't even have an identity label cut out for him!! What was I thinking? Well, of course, I wasn't thinking. I was creating! Like an artist who runs out of paint, I had too large a picture in mind!

The best thing I learned from this, is I have entirely too much junk coming into my daily emails which are superfluous and time wasting. Sure, it's fun to read what's on sale at fill in the blank dot com, and recieve Green Living tips, and recipes, and free coupons. but how important is it in the greater scheme of things? Not only was I cheating myself, I was cheating my family. I could be facebooking my grandkids! I had intended to sign up for those extraneous emails again, but I'm glad I haven't. The one that I've kept always gives me my evening smile, so that's staying. "I can has cheezburger, LOLcats" are my weakness.

Blizzard Moving

The blizzard had blinded us for so many miles, I felt, that night, as though I were in a dark frozen dream. We were all exhausted from the stress and strain of moving. Everyone in the family had helped load furniture and boxes onto the borrowed farm truck and our old run-down Studebaker.

My face was raw and chapped from sticking it out the window. This way I could yell at my mother when she drove too close to the edge of the raod. No heater, no defrost. I propped my numb feet on a box of pots and pans that rattled loudly whenever we hit a pothole. Each time the noise jolted me into alert wakefulness.

It was impossible to judge the conditions of these narrow country roads. Not daring to stop anywhere, we just kept going. My mother sat hunched, with fingers tightly clutched, over the steering wheel, peering vainly through the frosted windshield. She stuck her head out the window as often as I did to make sure she didn’t drive into a ditch.

Roger sat upright between us on the front seat drowsing lightly. At the age of eight he was no longer little enough to curl up to sleep. His long legs were splayed over the driveshaft-hump on the floor. Wendy, still a little butterball at six and a half was asleep on the floor, between the pots and pans and the bump. Her face rested on Roger’s knees. They reminded me of two played out puppies curled together, oblivious to the cold.

When we finally arrived at our new house, I wasn’t disappointed. My excitement grew when I saw, what appeared to me, a mansion rising out of the wild countryside. Adrenaline pumped my curiosity to explore. The snow had stopped blowing. It was just lightly floating down in clumps.

“We made it!” my mother breathed triumphantly. I could clearly see relief erasing the tension from her face.

“Hurray!” the kids yelled.

“I thought you guys were asleep.” I moaned.

“They should be!” admonished my mother. Then, turning to me, she said, “Take them upstairs and get them to bed. And...” she added, “you, go to bed, yourself.”

“Aww, Mom!” I whined. “Can’t I just look around a little bit, first?”

“It’s past midnight; please do what I asked.” She grabbed up the noise making box to haul off to the kitchen. “Besides, if you have so much energy, you can stay up and help unload!”

I didn’t need a second warning. “Okay, I’ll go to bed.” I conceded. “Come on, you two, let’s go find someplace to sleep.”

“I can put my own self to bed.” Roger muttered.

Entering a large hall leading to the staircase, the three of us “oohed and aahhed” at the beautiful woodwork of stairs and banister.

“This is rich people’s house’” my awestricken little sister cooed.

“Yeah.” Echoed Roger as we climbed the two flights to the next floor. We wanted so badly to explore our new home, but exhaustion overtook us. My father and old brother had leaned the mattresses against the wall, and had already left to go get another load. Roger claimed the room the mattresses were in and pushed the first one to the floor, grabbed a blanket from the box nearby. Wendy and I struggled with another mattress yanking, pulling, pushing and sliding it down the large hall to another room. Little did we know how cold that room would be. We slept in our winter coats with a blanket pulled tightly around us,

I laid awake staring at the bare windows as the frost turned to ice. It wasn't until the next day when my father pointed out that the radiator was turned off. If only we had known!

Today is My Son's Birthday

During my last pregnancy I sang songs to my belly as I rocked back and forth or danced about the room. If anyone had seen me, they would have laughed. I certainly did. I felt silly and giddy. But, I was also very serious about raising this child with more conscious purposefulness than with my last two. It had been 12 years since the birth of Therese, 13 since Laurie. Sometimes, when the baby kicked me, I would grab at my belly and press my hand against the protruding foot or elbow, and rub it, while talking like any mother smooching with her babe.

Xavier was born by Cesarean Section at Cedars Sinai Hospital in Beverly Hills, California when I was thirty-one years old. He was the child the doctors had told me I could never have. So, with a great exuberance I threw myself into motherhood, reading every available piece of information regarding infant care and child raising. I incorporated some of the new ideas I learned, and I let my creativity and intuition guide me otherwise.

I probably would have been considered a little unkind by the experts at times.  Perhaps judged as over stimulating my infant with the many bright pictures plastered on the walls of his nursery. These were not Winnie the Pooh and Mickey Mouse pictures. No, these were pages torn from National Geographic, or other magazines. Whatever grabbed my fancy ended up on those walls, and I changed them often, putting the old pictures in scrapbooks to share with my son, later.

Adorning his room were Japanese Kabuki dancers in grotesque masks, great detailed color photos of rare and beautiful flora and fauna of our planet, strange costumes and faces of people from other cultures, artwork of famous painters, incredibly intricate mosaic tile work from the Arab world, stained glass windows from French cathedrals, outer space depictions of planets and solar systems, maps of foreign countries, and overviews of architectural wonders. You name it, and it was probably on those walls.  Three or four mobiles floated from each corner of the ceiling and the piece de resistance, a full length mirror placed horizontally on the wall beside his crib, and another beside his changing table.  Perhaps it gave Xavier the illusion that he was never alone.  Perhaps he could gaze into it and see another, expanded version of his nursery and all the distracting things to look at.

I recall when he was about four years old when we lived in another place quite void of all this abundance of stimuli, I caught Xavier pantomiming in front  of a mirror.  When I asked him what he was doing, he answered, “I am dancing for my best friend! It was then, that I wondered about the wisdom of those strategically placed mirrors of his infancy.

Music was another thing I suppose I overindulged.  Every time I set my baby boy down for a nap I turned on a small tape recorder.  I played a lot of different music for him.  Mostly Classical, but often times, interspersed with traditional ethnic music with a Celtic or Hispanic flavor.  It mattered not to me that songs were sung in a foreign tongue.  What mattered to me was that he was exposed to beauty of all sorts.

Today is his birthday, he is 33 years old. I miss his being my little boy.