POSSUM TRACKS

https://www.facebook.com/jwhistfic

I am in the grandma zone, a long time writer and poet, posting at Crone Henge and BWL these days just because. Wish I could travel, and last year I was lucky enough to get back to the UK, specifically to Avebury to reconnect with the ancient temple. Hiking, camping, lover of solitude, cats, moons and gardens.

Sunday, April 10, 2016

How Writers Become Distracted

Have you finished training your person?

Have you?

Well, well, so you say, but let us see! Let us run through the steps again.

Repetition is how we all learn best!

***

Approach your person, meowing plaintively. When they glance down, as they do, you will do a sweet kitty drive-by, gently rubbing against their leg.

A good tip for beginners: When they are typing at high speed is the best time for this kind training!

Your person leans over. Yes she does! She says “What do you want, my fatty fuzzy drawers meatloaf meow-meow puddy-wuddy??” (Sometimes, it’s even dumber than that—there are studies.*)

This, inane as it may sound to you, is an excellent response. It shows that you haven’t been wasting your time. If you haven’t been training this person for long, maybe you’ve lucked out and are working with one of the smart ones.

Next, it’s time to flop down beside her chair. Stretch out really long, forepaws and backpaws extending in such a sexy way that, just for a flash, you show off the length of your claws. Bow your belly into one of those easy arcs that screams how flexible you are. Your tiger pelt catches the light with in a sublime halo of red-gold guard hairs.

Do this whole-heartedly, as if you’ll never arise again. Sometimes, for added effect, you may look over your shoulder and send one of those come hither blinks at the person before turning your head away, finally resting it, in a half disinterested manner, upon the floor again.

As soon as your person—the old ones, like the ones I have, will most certainly grunt and groan and make a huge fuss because they have to sit down cross-legged on the floor, whingeing on and on about “vertigo” “last week's surgery” “hip/knee replacements” or whatever is currently ailing their show-offy-monkey balancing-on-their-hind-legs skeleton. Do NOT ever, ever cave. They can get down onto the floor beside you--and, if you have anything to say about it--they will.

As soon as they are all the way down and are just starting to pet (or groom) you, jump up and walk away.

I know this may be tough, especially if they've presciently begun to execute the Aunt Patti Frequent Flyer Eagle Star Super Premium Top Gold level Wuffle which rubs all around your spine in the very bestest way. At such times, you must exercise will power.

You want this session to be a win, don't you?

Remember, consistency is the key to successful person training--even if that means also being consistently-inconsistent, and always at those times when they are relying on you to do what you did four times last week.

Leaving the scene doesn't necessarily mean distance. In fact, at first, it’s better if it isn’t, because then your person will continue attempting to interact, calling and enticing you with mousie fingers to return. But if you're going to close the deal, you must stick to the program and play hard-to-get. You might even flick your tail at them as you turn away and head out to the kitchen food bowl for a crunchy.

But don't be in a hurry. Bide your time. Be patient. Maybe have a big drink, too, or even visit the cellar cat box. While you are doing that, though, remain ever-vigilent.

As soon as their annoying self-centered typing resumes, trot upstairs and begin the process all over again.

***

But don't start feeling sorry for them, though. Don't waste your time.

Sometimes, okay, they do get to type a lot, because you're napping on the couch on the cat furniture on the other side of the table upon a special fleecy blanket or upon a Queen bed upstairs. You don't really need to be entertained, just at that moment. Besides, this person takes pretty good care of you. The cat box is effectively scooped. There is always a bowl with the aforementioned crunchies and daily fresh water--if that senile co-diety who also holds court here didn't keep standing in it.

If basic things like housekeeping aren't to your liking, you'll soon make those feelings clear. Believe me, persons--this is not a threat, it's a promise! I'll take this weighty subject up at our next person training lesson.

Currier & Ives, "The Favorite Cat"

~~Juliet Waldron

http://bookswelove.net/authors/waldron-Juliet

http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B004HIX4GS

Hop on over to these other talented Books We Love Authors:

http://triciamg.blogspot.com/ (Tricia McGill)

The Wars of Roses~View from Downstairs

Sunday, April 3, 2016

AN ATTIC VIEW

Once this attic was empty, but entire lives are stored up there now. When we arrived here, 30 years ago, the house was completely empty. At closing, my husband requested that nothing be left behind, and nothing was, so we began with a blank slate. Now, thirty ++ years later, the whole thing is jammed. First, came a set of rustic oak chairs from our Tennessee sojourn and a few end tables. Then, in rapid succession came my grandmother’s stuff—the sad remains that the early bird relatives had deemed unimportant—and then came my mother’s boxes and trunks when she entered a nursing home—and next came his mother’s many photo albums, a huge collection going back into the 1930’s, after she too ended up in “incarcerated”. Sadly, we can’t recognize more than half the people who are posed there, giving us tight New England smiles in those old pictures pictures.

Now all of it gathers dust. Some important boxes filled with memorabilia I would LOVE to find have vanished—gone without a trace when I went back to locate them later. Perhaps they’ve fallen into some Twilight Zone like void that may exist in the upper stories of houses. My husband suggests they've fallen into the same inter-dimensional crease where the lost socks go.

We’ve thought of cleaning it, of sorting through, of discarding most and preserving the few things that might still have some interest and/or value to the next generation. Then summer comes again and we abandon the place for another six months. Next winter, we think, next spring, but somehow it never happens. Our stuff is there, too. A host of coffee mugs emblazoned with the names of once famous and now dead Tech companies, untouched boxes of tractor-feed paper, and woolen tartan skirts made in Scotland made for 70 lb H.S. girl, as well as jackets and note books from 5^th and 6^th Form English school days—“O” level tide-pool biology and “A” level European History, adjacent to my husband’s brightly colored slacks purchased for 1970’s casual Fridays.

There is a solar bicyclist who no longer pedals, a strobe light from the Roaring Sixties, a trunk full of 78 records (Big Band, Classical, Jazz) which belonged to my mother, and a bust which my brother-in-law picked out of some East Village trash heap back before gentrification had driven out the artists. My huband's gun club trophies are parked on a rickety bookcase.

Deeper in, there are my own manuscripts--a rejection pile--that all writers back in the day accumulated--pages thumbed through and smelling of cigarette smoke. (We went broke mailing the stuff to agents/publishers and then having it sent back via SASE.) I even have a collection of dreary literary criticism from the 1920's simply because they they had my Grandfather Liddle's signature inside them, and I couldn't bear to throw them away.

~~Juliet Waldron
http://bookswelove.net/authors/Waldron-Juliet
http://www.julietwaldron.com

Hop on over to these other talented Books We Love Authors:

http://triciamg.blogspot.com/ (Tricia McGill)

All my Historical Novels
http://www.julietwaldron.com
http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B004HIXGS

Sunday, March 27, 2016

Elder Yard

We’re those annoying old folks in the neighborhood who don’t (and post-retirement no-longer-can afford even if they wanted to) yuppie “Arcadia” style* lawn care. (What else would you expect from a blogger who possum- identifies?)

Jes' passin' thru...

Husband and I bought this house 30+ years ago when we were in our late thirties and strong enough to do all the required maintenance. We cared for three long privet hedges, we mowed, and had the old, beat up silver maples—the reason we purchased the property in the first place—regularly thinned. We both worked, so paying for large tree maintenance was not a problem. We conscientiously fed the trees and hired trained arborists, not the butchers who engage in “topping” a.k.a. a really fast way to make a tree diseased, rotten, and highly likely to fall down in a wind storm.

Summer, 1985, one kid, and husband

2011, same tree, another angle, wider now

Over the years, I’ve planted 30 more trees on the property, which, considering that it’s barely an acre, was Arboreal Over-kill. The star of these early additions was an apple tree. The blooms delight us every spring. On a warm April evening it is possible to stand beneath it and hear the music of bees in the blossoms. For many autumns, this tree literally rained apples upon us. It still delights the eye and will always be honored for the mountains of sauce and pies it has provided.

Husband loathes yard work and curses every minute he spends doing it, so much fell on me and my bad back—although I’d expected all that and had still opted for this house. Our silver maples are “trash trees” which shed sticks and branches like crazy. I am forever picking up after them. Husband was forever driving to the recycle center with loads of dead wood and hedge clippings.

Years passed. Our health declined. There were trips to the hospital for big-deal surgeries. Much privet was removed. Yard maintenance has suffered.

We and the silver maples are all now in some disrepair, but we're still here, breathing for one another (carbon dioxide/oxygen cycle) and hoping for spring. They're sending up trial balloons as they shuck off those red bud casings.

Never mind that they cover my patio with their litter or that the pollen from their buoyant flowering makes all the mammals sneeze. We’re all quite pleased to witness another Vernal Equinox, another Purim, another Easter, another Hola Mahalla, another Holi, and any other spring celebration extant on our little blue planet. Welcome to the Growing Season!

* "Arcadia"
X-Files, Sixth year, Fifteenth episode
(Scary meets Hilarious)

~~Juliet Waldron

Hop on over to these other talented Books We Love Authors:

http://triciamg.blogspot.com/ (Tricia McGill)

http://connievines.blogspot.com.au/ (Connie Vines)

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/29437

Sunday, March 20, 2016

Genesee~~A Spring Storm

~~Juliet Waldron

All my Historical Novels
http://www.julietwaldron.com

"Aunt Kitty," Jenny began, dropping a curtsy, "I feel terribly restless. I have taken the liberty of dressing already, but I have come to ask if I might take out one of the ponies."

"Well, I suppose if you feel that might work a cure," Aunt Kitty said, looking up from her embroidery. Upon her round florid face, framed in an old fashioned outsized cap, was a look which seemed to say that she couldn't imagine anything even remotely connected with "restless."

After Mr. Desbrosses' proposal, after what Nelia had said, Jenny felt choked, like a dog at the end of a chain. It was a sensation that came with some frequency here.

"Nevertheless, Dear," Aunt Kitty said, turning her slow gaze to the windy gray outside the window, "There will certainly be rain. You could take cold."

"I shall keep close; I promise. Please. The air would do me so much good."

Did her Aunt really think a little rain would hurt? Why, on Oriskany, she'd been drenched to the skin many a time, caught out in the fields when a black western storm roared...

Cornelia, who had kept her promise and not said a word, looked up from her handwork. "She's cross as two sticks," she explained to her mother, "and so she shall remain until she gets some exercise."

"Very well. Jenny, my dear, don't go too far. We shall fret if you aren't back for tea."

As Jenny dropped a curtsy, Aunt Kitty's china blue eyes returned to the embroidery. Her artistry, worked exactingly upon a chemise, would be seen and admired by only the wearer–and the laundress.

Jenny's passion for exercise was understood by her Albany relatives as an aspect of her 'breeding' and was treated with a certain amused indulgence. Doubtless, it was the Indian side that had this unladylike taste for roaming.

It was already much colder than during her interview with Mr. Desbrosses. A raw wind gusted from the north.

She had kept on the serviceable brown skirt and plain white shirt, but the apron was gone. Over all was a long green caraco jacket. Instead of the matching green tricorn ornamented with a feather, she had plaited her dark hair into a single braid and chosen a warm and wind proof cap which tied beneath the chin.

At the barn a groom saddled a brown and white pony. Echoing Aunt Kitty, he cautioned about the weather.

"Now, Miss, don't stay out too long and take cold." His black face was as circumspect as a father's.

"A little rain won't melt me," she said with a smile, availing herself of his cupped hands to mount. In Albany she had, of course, to ride sidesaddle instead of astride.

After settling her skirts, she took the short crop he offered and trotted out of the yard, a neat little figure in green and brown.

The stableman watched. Not likely, I s'pose," he mused, that a little cold water will melt that girl. She's no fine lump o' white sugar, after all."

Down the road Jenny went, bobbing in the choppy rhythm of a trot, along a cow path leading south into the wide public pastures. The upturned belly of the river reflected clouds of slate...

Her cheeks and fingers were soon tingling, bitten by the frigid wind. As she approached the big house that housed the General and his military family, she felt icy splatters.

Slowing the pony, she began the planned circumnavigation of the house. Not rain, but sleet now, harder every minute.

A groan came from the north. The trees, thinly leafed, leaned before the wind. The indistinct chaos of a squall, like a high-shouldered animal, bounded over the hill, blotting out the view. An upstate May, even after the lovely weather they'd been having, was not exempt from a wintry sortie.

"Damn," Jenny muttered, enjoying the feel of a country curse on her lips as she reined the pony around.

The squall struck with a roaring, hissing blast. Cross, disappointed, and now shivering fiercely in the wind, she trotted away along the main road, a road which passed by tumble down cabins which had once housed slaves...

~~Juliet Waldron

All my Historical Novels
http://www.julietwaldron.com

Genesse may be found:

http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/genesee-juliet-waldron/1103112072?ean=2940011129636

http://amzn.com/B004BSH1R2

https://www.allromanceebooks.com/product-genesee-481068-158.html

Hop on over to these other talented Books We Love Authors:

http://triciamg.blogspot.com/ (Tricia McGill)

http://connievines.blogspot.com.au/ (Connie Vines)

https://blog.bufferapp.com/the-science-of-time-perception-how-to-make-your-days-longer

Sunday, March 13, 2016

Setting The Clock

The task of changing clocks tonight set me to thinking about how, as I grow older, each day seems to just race by. I remember Granny Liddle telling me, somewhere around my eighth or ninth year when I was hopping about, wishing aloud for Christmas to come, “Don’t wish your life away.” In childhood, that’s exactly what everyone does. We impatiently wait for summer to arrive to get out of school, we wait for Christmas, for Halloween, for the State Fair, for our birthday, for that new movie.

I’ve done a little looking up via what my Uncle Richard used to call “Mr. Google” regarding this business of our perception of time, and the latest ideas indicate that we’re, all of us, a collection of internal clocks. Interestingly, different parts of the brain govern different pieces of perception—a distributed system of cerebral cortex, cerebellum and basal ganglia--and all these must coordinate results with one another. Even way down at the cellular level our bodies are running little programs, as Cell A gives instructions to Cell B next door about what—chemically--ought to happen next.

“Time” for you and me is essentially a series of experiences which the brain organizes in a way that makes sense. According to neuroscientist David Eagleman:

When our brains receive new information, it doesn’t necessarily come in the proper order. This information needs to be reorganized and presented to us in a form we understand. When familiar information is processed, this doesn’t take much time at all. New information, however, is a bit slower and makes time feel elongated.

In short, an oldie like myself pretty much knows what to expect from their daily routine and doesn’t pay much attention as we go through it. We’re on automatic pilot. To a child, however, all sorts of experiences register as “new,” and consequently, a lot of activity goes on as the brain sorts and structures all this fresh information.

If you do something new every day, it will slow the passage of time a bit. One of the pieces I read suggested sky-diving as a cure for that feeling of life zooming past, but I think I’ll pass. With my luck, the shute wouldn’t open.

Another idea about this curious feeling that time is now speeding past is suggested by Paul Janet, a 19^th Century philosopher. He proposed that with the passage of time, a single year becomes a smaller and smaller percentage of a life. The first week you’re alive is, therefore, the “longest.” It's all acceleration (a.k.a. downhill) from there.

To put it another way, each year only represents a smaller and smaller portion of your life. At 71, a year only represents 1.41% of the total. Hit the link below and check out the fascinating interactive graphic which illustrates this idea:

http://www.fastcodesign.com/3048249/infographic-of-the-day/experience-the-effects-of-aging-on-your-perception-of-time

~~Juliet Waldron

All my Historical Novels
http://www.julietwaldron.com

Hop on over to these other talented Books We Love Authors:

http://triciamg.blogspot.com/ (Tricia McGill)