Welcome to my blog and sneak peek pages!

 

 

If you can’t eat it or play with it, just pee on it and walk away.

        I’m a mystery writer–read my ‘about me’ page to find out more.   Feel free to check out the excerpts from my Doggoned Mystery series and take a look at my favorite pictures of our pond.  The Bull Pen page has pictures of our bullies and friends.

     I lost a sister to breast cancer in 2001.   Please click on the Keep a Breast site below my blog lists.  With one click, you can aid in funding early detection of breast cancer.  Help us beat this beast.   It’s free and only takes a minute of your time.  Click often each click helps.

 

    

The house of cleaning horrors

 

     This old house seems to breed dust.  I could vacuum, mop, and dust every day and I don’t think it would make much of a difference.  I kid you not.  I dust off the coffee table, and I swear, ten minutes later, you can write your name in it again.  Vacuum the rug and a split second later you can see the dog hair rise out of the pile like Neptune from the sea.

     Dust bunnies procreate faster than real ones.  Then they mushroom from teensy baby dust bunnies to killer rogues in no time.  I have to beat them into submission.  I saw the dogs running from one the other day.

     The ceiling fans grow a coat of fur more rapidly than a shaved poodle.  It’s downright scary.  I’m also constantly cleaning cobwebs from the ceiling and corners and yet they stay one jump ahead of me.

     Muddy paw prints on the kitchen floor are nothing compared to the tracked in salt at the front door.  Cleaning up that mess takes more elbow grease than what would fill a deep fry vat at Kentucky Fried Chicken.

Update on the snow removal and ServiceMagic

 

     I was quite surprised, since today was Sunday, that we received a call from one of the places that ServiceMagic had given us.  The woman even drove past my MIL’s house and gave us an estimate for the work there.  Then she came by our house to do an estimate for our sidewalk.

     Both estimates were very reasonable.  We hired her.  Now we don’t have to worry about traveling across town to clear off the mother in law’s walks every time it snows.  This company will do it.  Our snow angel can take a well deserved rest too.  What a load off our minds.

     I know I’ll go to ServiceMagic again in the future for other things we might need to have done.  They prescreen all the pros they send to you.  They list people who do everything from remodeling homes to house cleaning. 

     I will have to tell my neighbor’s son about ServiceMagic, maybe he can list his business with them.

The problem with snow is snow removal

 

     Yes, we did get snow, quite a bit, though not as much as Philly and south.  Our snow angel shoveled our walk again color me happy since shoveling the walk completely exhausts me for the rest of the day. 

     I do wish DH’s mother had a snow angel.  DH had his stomach in knots all day thinking about how we can get her walks cleared.  He can’t do it and feels guilty that he can’t.  She, of course, adds to that guilt on purpose.  There’s no way I can get over there to do it either.  The snow plow managed to block our driveway and my project for tomorrow is to clear the wall of ice he left for us.  That’s going to take all afternoon and it’s going to kill me.  Sore muscles here I come.

     I got a little creative tonight while doing some research on snow removal in our area.  I found ServiceMagic.com.  I plugged in my MIL’s address, named my project—residential snow removal, and they matched me with two places that do it in our area.  Both of them will give a free estimate too.  How cool is that?   I’ll let you know it goes.

I sent myself a PajamaGram

 

     It began with an idea for a character in one of the books I’m working on—her pajamas.  She’s supposed to have a pair of PJs with bulldogs on them.  My character secretly collects all things with bulldogs.  (Not unlike the way that I collect bull terriers.)  She owns a bulldog.  Yes, this book has a bulldog and not a bull terrier.  It’s not from the Doggoned series and one of these days, I’ll reveal more about this book, but not yet.

     Anyway, back to the research…I went surfing for a pair of bulldog PJs.  What I found I wasn’t happy with so I kept hunting through sites that sold PJs.  I hadn’t intended to buy anything.  Truly dear readers, I did not intend to buy anything.  I was looking for my character’s PJs.  I wanted to be able to describe them in detail.

     Then I hit the PajamaGram site.  I told you I collect bull terrier stuff, right?  Over the years, a friend has presented me with New Yorker magazine covers that have that white dog, the one that sorta kinda looks like a BT, on it.  (I need to get those framed one of these days.)  Well there they were, New Yorker dog PJs.  I squealed with delight.  DH got curious and came to see what I had me so tickled.

     I pointed to the screen where I’d enlarged the fabric pattern.  By this time, I was wiping drool off my chin. 

     He laughed when he saw the dog he knows so well from our collection. 

     “I have to have them,” I said.

     “Yes, you do.”

     I looked at the price and started to waffle.  “I do need some new Jammies.  The PW conference is coming up…my old ones are looking ratty.  But—“

     “Buy them.  They’re cute.”

     The cheapskate in me reared its ugly head.  “They cost way more than I’d normally pay for any.” 

     “Oh, for heaven’s sake, just order them.”

     “They can be your Valentine’s gift to me.”

     DH rolled his eyes.  “Don’t worry about it.  Buy them.”

Hot flashes are a handy thing to have…sometimes

 

     DH keeps the thermostat set at a not so green temperature because he gets cold so easily.  This old house of ours does have some drafts that at times that will drive you under an afghan or have you calling the dogs to sit with you.

     Hot flashes or what I like to call ‘my inner child who plays with matches’ do come in handy at times.  Of course, she doesn’t play with matches on command, which would make her an even handier thing to have.  There has been a time or two where I’ve wished for a hot flash this winter. 

     Last night I wished for one.  For some reason I couldn’t get warm.  I was so chilly that I called Gavin up onto the chair with me and covered us up with a throw.  Gavin loves snuggling under covers so he didn’t mind.

     Then there have been times where I’ve suffered from too much inner heat.  Like when I’m trying to sleep, on a very hot summer day, or while I’m standing in line at a store.  Those are times where having a hot flash is most uncomfortable.

Finally decided on a paint color for the kitchen…

 

     I’ve wanted to paint the kitchen forever.  I’ve waffled over this repeatedly.  One after another, paint sample cards have hung on the wall above the cabinets where I can see them from my desk.  Some were too dark, others too light, then one day a few months ago, G gave me a couple of cards she’d brought home for her own use and had used to choose her colors. 

     I narrowed my choices down to two colors.  Behr paint’s Delicious Melon and Luminary both extremely close but it was the darker of the two that seems to work best.  Luminary was my choice.  It draws on the floor tile color, it’s light enough to be cheerful, and it has a nice warmth to it. 

     This will be my spring project.  Once I can open the windows I’ll go buy the paint.  Painting anything in this house takes on a comedic shape.  Two Bull Terriers, a ladder, drop cloth, paint rollers, and fresh paint are disasters waiting to happen.  It’s good thing the wall color will be similar to the floor.

     That sounds weird, similar to the floor.  I’m telling you it will look nice.  The cabinets are a medium stain on birch and the counter top is forest green.  The floor is a pale peach tone with small accent tiles of green.  The back splash is white.  The paint will make the cabinets pop and it will brighten an ugly paneled kitchen.  When I do it this spring, I’ll post before and after pictures.

     We are not responsible for the paneling it was here when we moved in.  I’d tear it down but then that would mean hiring someone in to put up dry wall and take down the nasty drop ceiling.  We can’t afford that.

I really didn’t want to break in my new boots

 

     Worn out and no longer warm, my old winter boots were ready for the trash.  For the life of me, I couldn’t find a decent pair in a style I liked.  [Warm, waterproof, and easily slipped on and off.]  I’m lazy and when the pups want out they want out NOW.  Finally, I found a pair in a catalog and ordered them several weeks ago.  They arrived last week.

     We had some cold weather the last few weeks but the snow had passed us by.  My new boots sat by the back door neglected, unworn, and I prayed they’d stay that way until next year.  I hate snow.

     No such luck.  It is snowing tonight.  I had to put them on to take the dogs out for their last piddle break.  That was around 1 a.m. and, by then, we already had an inch of that white stuff.  It’s after 3 a.m. and it’s still snowing.  At least it’s not a blizzard.  The snow is falling gently and it is quite fluffy.

     I hope when I wake it is sunny and the snow is gone or, at least, mostly gone.

Word choices

 

     I can’t tell you how often I will fuss over word choices.  A first draft is rife with bad choices.  My verbs are feeble and lackluster.  The descriptions are hackneyed and drab. 

     “It’s boring, boring, BORING!”  I scream as I read over a new page.  “I can do better.”

     I believe my delete and backspace keys will wear out long before any of the other keys on my keyboard.

     Dear Hubby and Gavin are used to this and don’t bat an eye.  Patty will often dive for her crate but that’s how she is. 

     I go over each word, dredging for something better, brighter, and stronger.  No wonder it takes me so long to write.  I want my readers to feel the textures, hear the sounds, see, even taste and smell what my character sees, tastes and smells.  I want to yank you into the story, suspend your disbelief, and entertain you.

     Have patience with me.  It’s my greatest hope that you will feel satisfied and entertained when you finish one of them.  If I can do that, and make you want more, I will be content.

Gavin doesn’t do well with change

 

     Poor Gavin.  He’s very confused.  Our kitchen is the coldest room in the house.  Gavin’s crate has been in the kitchen since he arrived here at the age of eight weeks.  He’s now eight years old.  I moved his crate to the living room tonight.  With the dreadfully cold weather we’ve had lately, he’s been fussing at night in his crate trying to cover himself with his bedding. 

     I did some rearranging of furniture a few hours ago and his crate is now next to Patty’s.  (Oh, yeah this has also confused her a bit.)  When I moved Gavin’s crate, he was busy getting a belly tickle from DH so he really didn’t notice.  When DH finished, I showed Gavin where his crate was.  I did, honestly I did.  Gavin even went in and out of it several times.

     Then we let Patty out of her crate so she could see the change too.  She thought it was a funny joke.  She quickly pounced on, and teased Gavin.  Then she did a silly huckle butt on the couch.  All this wound Gavin up and he raced back and forth from living room to kitchen.  They took a while to settle down.

     When I told them to kennel up, Gavin ran to the kitchen and looked for his crate, and looked for his crate, and stood in the middle of the floor looking puzzled.  I showed him his crate, again.  It’s going to take a while for him to get used to this.  In the meantime, I might need to go looking for a dog psychologist.

Where do you get your ideas?

 

     I hear that a lot.  Unbelievably, I can get a book idea from almost anything.  DH was watching the show Pawn Stars a few nights back when I spotted an item that I thought would work great in the hands of a serial killer.  I took notes.

     An overheard conversation will often make its way onto the written page.  Don’t scream at someone on your cell phone if you don’t want your conversation to be the dialogue for someone’s book.  Your right to privacy stops when the decibel level goes up.  I’m a people watcher.  I find many characters wandering off the street and into my books. 

     Then there’s the ‘people I enjoy killing in print’ category.  Those people are changed, rearranged, disguised, and are usually the bodies that my protagonist finds.  They are people who have caused me harm and heartache.  The corpse could be the idiot who walks his dog past our place and never cleans up after it. 

     I know whom it is that I kill off but my victims never do.  It’s so liberating and much better than paying a therapist.