Do you know that children’s book? It is a rhythm and rhyming book and that’s the title. It starts out “Hands, hands, fingers, thumbs, dum, deedle, dum, deedle, dum, dum, dum. And it goes on from there.
We’ve had our own version of this in real life this week. First the grand girl got sick. I thought it was just a fever but she got sicker and sicker. No runny nose, no pulling at the ears, no other symptoms until I saw her throat while she was crying. It was bright red. That can’t be good. Then her mother began to get a sore throat. A headache. Spots on her hands. SPOTS ON HER HANDS???
They got worse. Spreading to the soles of her feet and it hurt to walk, she said. Then we noticed the spots on Cora’s toes.
My daughter went to the doctor and the doctor said “No MORE Monkeys jumping on the bed!”
Wait! That’s another book. Gack! Too many rhymes and songs these days going through my head.
spotty hands
Okay, so the doctor said, “You have ‘hand, foot, and mouth’ and it is highly contagious, for two weeks.”
My daughter is home from work. She feels miserable “It feels like all my nerve endings are on fire.” The baby acts like she feels great, except she doesn’t want to walk if she can beg a lap or a hip-carry. Awwww.
spotty feet
I feel great. So far. But if you don’t see me at the Funnel Tunnel dedication ceremony tonight. I’ve got the “foot in mouth”.
An Fun Funnel on Montrose. Y’all I’ve added another blog about my neighborhood! I’ve finally figure out how to do this and can now post my neighborhood news here and there. Press the above link to find out more and see the new site. Today’s update is about the new art installation on Montrose Blvd. I think you’ll like it.
Just completed a good book about writing by Sol Stein – Stein on Writing. Sol Stein not only has written books, he has edited numerous bestselling and critically acclaimed writers. If you want to be a writer, or are a writer, if I were you I would pay attention.
Here are a few good tips I’d like to pass along from his book:
Excellence in diction is the most important characteristic of fine writing. He means that the right word choice makes all the difference in a good book.
Do adverb and adjective liposuction on your manuscript. Most sentences don’t need more words to make them better, they need less.
Pick up the pace of your manuscript by making conversation adversarial, short sentences, frequent paragraphing, eliminate two-thirds of your words, delete scenes that don’t matter to the whole project even if they are lovely.
Use all six senses throughout your story. Wow! Does this make a difference!
Flashbacks: as a rule never put them in the first few chapters, and cut down on information dumping.
Here’s how Mr. Stein teaches how to show and not “tell”:
She boiled water. (tells)
She put the kettle on the stove. (begins to show)
She filled the kettle from the faucet and hummed till the kettle’s whistle cut her humming short. (shows)
The secret of good dialogue is – cut the small talk, listen to the way people use dialect and use it in your story,
A good way to create tension in a story is to note a fact. This often leaves a reader wondering why you’ve done it. For instance, “It is cold at 6:40 in the morning of a March day in Paris, and seems even colder when a man is about to be executed by firing squad.”
Use “particularity” in your writing. In his book On Becoming a Novelist, John Gardner said, “Detail is the lifeblood of fiction.” Sol Stein writes, It is not just detail that distinguishes good writing, it is detail that individualizes. I call it “particularity.” Here is one small example of the many that Mr. Stein uses. Instead of saying “Vernon was a heavy smoker.” You could say, “Vernon coughed from the ground up.”
Similes and metaphors? Use them. No clichés allowed.
Revision is the most important part of writing.
Mr. Stein says a great deal more in his book. His examples and his chapters on how to write specific things like love scenes should not be ignored, but I don’t have room or time for more. I hope this helps give you a little boost in your writing today.
If you want to explore more about this blog look under the pages “About” and “Welcome to My Blog” for some new pages which will soon be ongoing project areas.
Oh! And I just discovered a new favorite book. It is called “The Language of Flowers” by Vanessa Diffenbaugh. Wow, the writing is gorgeous. The story is about a girl shuffled from foster home to foster home. She has attachment issues. The book opens with her eighteenth birthday as she is being kicked out of the “system”. This makes the story sound awful and sad. It isn’t. It is so well written with the past and present of the girl’s life woven in such a seamless manner that I found it hard to put down, and hardly able to wait until I could get back to reading it to the end. The girl learns by heart the meanings of all the flowers and then makes a living because of it. It is a daring and hopeful adventure. But at its heart the book is about redemption and forgiveness. Two of my all time favorite subjects in a story. I hope you take my word for it and read this wonderful book.
English: Category:Images of Dallas, Texas (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
I didn’t go to preschool or kindergarten. Perhaps that’s why it wasn’t long into my first year of school that I was sent to the principal’s office. Here’s what happened: The teacher had left the room. In a firm moment of lost reason I decided it would be super cool to stand on my desk and pretend to be the teacher. We had desks that were little tables with separate chairs. I stood on my desk, not next to it or at the front of the class (well I didn’t need to, my desk was at the front of the class). I danced. I sang. I adapted my best Mrs. Nelson voice – yes, that really was her name – and reminded the class to sit down and be quiet. The class went from hilarious laughter to dead silent. For a moment I felt real POWER! Then I saw the fear in their eyes. Nope, they were not afraid of me. Me, still standing on my desk. I didn’t have to turn around to know who had just re-entered the classroom.
This same teacher soon discovered that my lack of attention and discipline might be related to the fact that I couldn’t see a thing she was writing on the board. Board? I didn’t get why we were even watching her scribble on it. All that watching seemed a waste of time. Mrs. Nelson sent me home with a note that I couldn’t read. Probably because I hadn’t learned how yet. It seemed so ominous.
Soon we were headed to Dallas to see our optometrist. I know. Seems extreme to go from Houston to Dallas to get an eyeglasses prescription but that’s what how my family rolled. Besides, the optometrist and his family were friends with my family. The only other reason I can think that we did that was because the visit was free. We also ate and slept at their house. This was in the early 60’s. It seems such a weird and wacky thing to do coming from the perspective of nowadays. I mean, Dallas was a long way away in those days. Not that Dallas has moved closer. It just seems like it has because the speed limit is higher and cars are faster – or we drive faster, I don’t know which. Maybe it was a weird and wacky thing in those days, too. Or maybe the White family was that amazing to let us do it. Mrs. White was probably the hospitable person on the planet. She had five kids. We had four kids. That’s a lot of people to feed and house.
Thank you White family of Dallas. I know there are many of you all over the world by now but just a line to say those moments we spent telling stories late into the night from the living room floor were wonderful for all of us kids.
And thank you Mrs. Nelson from E.F. Smith Elementary for being the only teacher to write a positive note on my report card in five years of grade school. “Becky is a wonderful artist!”
So my first pair of glasses were light blue. Cat glasses. The first time I put them on when we got home from the store I went out in the back yard. It was the first time I saw detail. Detail!! You mean everyone can see the individual blades of grass on the ground? It isn’t just a flat mass of green? Clouds? There are clouds in the sky? Suddenly my colorful world was full of wonderful detail. There are not only places to go but things to see! How exciting!
The other day I was driving West on I-10, my thoughts ranged from the mundane (how was I going to find the time to stain the floors of the Oldcastle house) to the odd (I love renovation. Why didn’t I do this full-time?).
I’ve discovered laying glass tile is a breeze. If they weren’t so expensive I would plaster rooms with them. Rooms! At the Oldcastle house I put glass tile around the bath vanity, including at the floor around the vanity because the hole that we filled in with cement was filled too high to put conventional tile on. So here you see the dark tile around the new vanity.
Sure, I could begin a small renovation business. I had just installed glass tiles and grouted them in the master bath of the house.
They looked perfect. I had designed several of the new elements of the house from the cabinets (wish they were all white, though) and the bathroom vanities. I had added a light where there was none to create a dining room area. It was fun. Just wish I wasn’t using our money to do it. How much more fun would this be if it were someone else’s money? I could do wonders for people looking to change their old and drab bathrooms and kitchens.
We had already been approached by two neighbors who were interested in purchasing the property. So I knew things were going to be okay with it.
Kitchen almost done.
We had established that this week we would be putting up a “for sale” sign. Finishing touches, completing the punch list, that’s all we have left.
Then my mother-in-law called. She had blood in her stool A lot of blood. She wanted a ride to the doctors. My husband took her, after a consultation with the doctor, they had her at the hospital in fifteen minutes. Her blood-thinner levels in her blood were at the stage where it was surprising that she had survived. She was bleeding internally. There was fluid around her heart. It didn’t look good.
First night in the ICU she called my husband at 2 AM and told him if he didn’t get down there and get her out he would find a dead mother in the morning. We spent time with her the next few days. Every day and every night it was a new conspiracy theory. For instance the hospital staff was conspiring against her to keep her in bed so they could take more of her money. And the electronics in the room were making the clocks and her watch jump ahead every few hours so that it always looked like 2 AM so she would remain confused. The scary one was that no one was visiting her. And who was I to tell her different? We wouldn’t take the time to come visit. We weren’t caring enough to make sure she was fine. Okay.
My sweet, dear, beloved mother-in-law had gone “around the bend” in a big way.
In order to show her that we cared I resorted to bringing her a pile of get well cards from her loved ones – i.e. all of us – with notes and pictures, vases of flowers (fake because “real ones make me sicker”), photos of us visiting when she was too asleep to know we were there and making her drink water (“I don’t need water. Everyone makes me drink water. It’s just a trick.”)
The renovations and the rest of the world had to come to some sort of agreement with timing.
Last night, after several nearly sleepless nights we figured she was calmer. Perhaps it had something to do with the fact that we took the phone away from her. So we planned to sleep. Then the phone rang at 1AM. This time a neighbor across from the Oldcastle house was calling to the report the garage door and front door were open. We asked him to please lock the house up. We rose early to drive over to see what damage had been done. Nothing. Everything was as it had been. Strange.
Then it hit me. I forgot the fundamental rule of property recently abandoned by its occupant.
Change the locks.
This wish for renovation work full-time must have been the thinking of a brain high on paint fumes.
English: The Crystal Palace in 1910, London (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Here it is Wednesday, time for another book review. I’m afraid it isn’t pretty.
Charles Todd has been one of my favorite writers for years. The Ian Rutledge series and the Bess Crawford series are a pleasure to read. At least until Proof of Guilt entered this reader’s world.
An unidentified body turns up in London with a man’s watch that can be identified as having belonged to a wine merchant. The body is a victim of a hit and run but the accident happened elsewhere and the victim moved. And the body is not that of the wine merchant. No, he has disappeared though.
The story shambles all over the place with the lead investigator, Ian Rutledge driving back and forth all over England. There was one exciting part near the end of the book, which I thought would turn the story into a good one, but when the scene was over so was the excitement. I never did figure out the point of the mystery. And where was the missing man? Does this imply that we will see this shadowy figure again, as in a future villain? Or was there no point in his body never turning up?
I am sadly disappointed in all of this. Does it mean we have come to the end of Ian Rutledge as one of the most innovative characters in fiction today? I hope not. I hope this was a bubble in a wonderful series. Perhaps mother and son team Todd’s editor needs to give them a break from this stereotypical churning out of one book a year business.
Another sad entry into this category is my other favorite author’s new book.
Deborah Crombie’s latest is called The Sound of Broken Glass. It isn’t quite as pointless as the above example but there were times while reading it that I thought it could have been about half as long as it was.
For one thing the characters don’t seem to be cohesive to the story until everything is tied up at the end.
A lawyer turns up dead in an odd and disturbing way. He has ties to the world of music. There are some guys in a band. There is one in particular who seems to be a suspect. There are flashbacks in italics to a young boy’s point of view of growing up in Crystal Palace.
I love the setting details and the factual bits about the Crystal Palace at the beginning of each chapter. I love to learn things when I read. Another thing I love about her series of books is the continuing interesting relationship between Duncan and Gemma and their growing family of kids and dogs. This always add such a warm point of human interest you can’t help but love, love, love her books.
But of all her Duncan and Gemma series of books this is the weakest. I really believe this is a result of a constant pressure to produce at least a book a year. That pressure is set up by her editors and agents, probably because of a perceived demand by the public. Sadly, it isn’t unusual. I saw it with the series with Kay Scarpetta written by Patricia Cornwell.
There is a demand by the public! But it will go away if the product isn’t up to the standard set by wonderful previous books.
When the grand-girl arrived I was asked what I wanted to be called. My response was “Grandma.” To tell you the truth I don’t actually know any grandmas named ‘Grandma’. So I thought it would be unique. You know what I mean?
I also like “Gamma” as in the MOST powerful ray in the universe. I like the idea of being a powerful force for grandmotherly good. Roight.
My mother is ‘MeeMaw’. The children’s other grandmother is ‘NaNa’. I’ve heard a lot of cutesy grandmother names lately like ‘BeeBee’ or ‘Sugar’ or ‘Sweetie’. I have a friend whose grandkids call her “Ninena” (I spelled it phonetically, I’m sure it is spelled ‘Nina’). My daughter suggested “Banana”. I rejected that right away. Not only is it cutesy but I don’t want to be confused with a fruit.
My beloved grandmother’s name was “Nannie”. There can be no one else like her. My other grandmother’s name was “Grandmother”. We didn’t know her very well. I think sometimes names say it all. “Grandmother” is a bit stand-offish.
It has been a family tradition that the first grand baby names the grandparent.
To the grand-girl I suggested “Grandma”, “Grammy”, or “Grams” to no effect. At twenty months old, the grand-girl was thinking. She can recite her A,B,C’s. She can spell her name. She can count to ten.
I remained nameless.
To be honest this child never ever had to call me anything. I would do anything she indicated with a flick of her tiny wrist.
Then about two weeks ago I heard her practicing something that sounded like “Grandma” only it came out as “NHN-ma” – the first syllable pronounced somewhere inside the upper sinus cavity. (If a kid can do it so can you.) She would spend time by herself in another room saying this over and over. Precious.
Then this past weekend I heard her call me “NeeNaw”. I said, “So I’m NeeNaw?” She said, “Tee-Taw”. I said, “So I’m ‘Tee-Taw’?” She smiled.
I’m trying to think back to when we were first married. We were so young. We thought we were so old. Thirty two years ago today we were married. It has been an interesting journey.
inches from the dashboard
He admitted that if I hadn’t said anything, he wouldn’t have remembered. That would be a first. He has always been the first one to say it on the day of. He has always been the one to remember. So let me tell you why this year is different.
We are trying to get two houses on the market this week. Houston is experiencing an amazing seller’s market but we really can’t know that for sure until our houses sell, right?
One house is the one where the renter left in the middle of the night. The neighbors told me about the commotion waking them, and wondered why she would do that to me. I found out that she was gone on the first of the month when I told her I was coming to get the rent so she wouldn’t have to mail it. I have always had a good relationship with the renter so I was puzzled as to why she would move without notice. I found out the real reason a week later when Aaron “Rents” pulled their van into the driveway. They were looking for their furniture. which hadn’t been paid for. Okay. I get it. The renter stole the rented furniture. She plotted it well. I remember how she called me because of a leak under the sink fifteen days before she disappeared. I had it repaired immediately. Later I wondered why she didn’t take that opportunity to tell me she was moving. It was because of the plot to steal the furniture, yet she wanted to leave the house in reasonable repair. Well, I say reasonable repair without detailing the holes in the walls and the unreasonable layer of in the kitchen. There are great globs of white paint spilled on the hard-wood floors, deep scratches where something has been dragged across the wood and patches where it looks like water sat for some time. Today I discovered a layer of gunk around the baseboard. What is it? I don’t know. I think a nice thick coating of dark floor stain is in order.
The picture is of my husband while we are delivering a window from Home Depot to the house. It hardly fit in the car so we have the seats scooted as far forward as possible, the seat backs are nearly jacked-knifed into the dashboard. This is immediately after our anniversary dinner. Needless to say this is quite dangerous.
The second house is a sweet little gem in the heart of the city (Houston). The front yard is in a horrible way. Probably because I’m a gardener and can’t bear the weeds creeping from one end of a flower bed to the other. We’ve had renters here, also. They are busy guys who don’t know too much about gardens, I suppose. Details of garden mess? There are trees that have come up as volunteers – from birds planting them or squirrels forgetting where they put their stash – they’ve come up inches from the pavement so they have to be removed. It’s a shame when you can’t get a nursery-bought tree to grow but there are the wild birch, pecan, and camphor seedlings doing so well they must to be uprooted. The old shutters have finally shuffled off their earthly coil, which means they are crumbling to pieces and I can no longer glue and tape them together. The dust must be power-washed off the exterior of the house. The porch paint is chipped. That is all. The work must all be accomplished on Friday, that is the day after tomorrow. Yikes.
Then my husband’s mother has been in and out of the hospital twice since the first of May. They can’t find what is wrong with her. She has a low-grade fever and doesn’t want to eat. Then they found fluid around her heart but determined that it was a result of the vague inflammation that can’t be found. Zounds! What to do? What to do?
The grand girl isn’t feeling well, hasn’t been all week. Her temp is up and she is coughing at night.
This is keeping us from being current on birthdays, holidays, and anniversaries at the moment. So the husband is forgiven for forgetting. Plus, he is doubly forgiven because he quickly rallied and gave me a great gift card and took me to Carrabba’s Italian. It was scrumptious.
Please forgive us both if we haven’t been keeping up very well with you and yours. Happy birthday, Happy Memorial Day, Happy Anniversary, and cheers!
Rebecca Nolen 