New Year's Resolutions

I do not believe in making New Year's resolutions. I don't make them. But. . . if I did, they would look something like this for 2009:

1. Remain healthy. I can rationalize this by saying I already eat an extremely healthy diet, take my supplements, exercise (except when injured), don't smoke, follow the red wine diet daily, do yoga, and get an adequate amount of sleep. But then, I've been doing all of these things for the past thirty years, so. . .
2. Lose weight. Like most of the rest of the population, I need to lose about 15 pounds. If I continue with #1 above, then what I would change is to eat less, exercise more. Sigh.
3. Be a good friend. That means staying in touch with friends and family, promise what I can deliver, and deliver. I can do that.
4. Go digital. I'm on my way. Televisions are ready for digital reception, thanks to Comcast. My camera is digital. I have a slide and negative convertor for translating them into digital format. A good rainy day project. And what about all those audio tapes and vinyl? (Some of us remember vinyl as an album.) I have software and tools to convert both to CDs. I'm about 30% through tape conversion. Vinyl is next.
5. Declutter life and mind. See #4 above. Quarterly I go through closets and donate anything I haven't worn in the past year. I swap books on Paperback Swap. I send out more books than I order, but use my credits for books I really want to read but might not want to keep. I try and banish thoughts that stress me, but the economy keeps creeping in.
6. Reduce carbon footprint. Easy one. I recycle everything. I switched to curly lightbulbs. I work ina home office. And I cluster my trips so that I don't return to the same place an hour later because I forgot something. If I don't need what I forgot, it waits until the next clustered trip.
7. Write. This is like breathing. If I don't write, I go nuts. I could break this down into smaller units. Finish Mad Max book 1. I locked it over the holidays. All I am waiting for is the last proofreader to return her manuscript. I have to complete the "business" of getting ready for more submissions: query letter, short synopsis, longer synopsis. Finish draft of Mad Max book 2. I should reach the end of the initial draft within a month. I'm about 55,000 words into it, but haven't started any rewriting or tuning of the manuscript. Begin research for Mad Max book 3. I have the first books on my table and am working through them. Blog. My friend and colleague Becky Mushko would like me to blog daily. I don't have enough to say that anyone would want to read, so I don't. Sorry, Becky. I'll try and do better.
8. Solve global homelessness and hunger. I'd suggest feeding the homeless to the hungry, but too many people don't understand satire. Besides, something like that was already proposed by Jonathan Swift a few centuries back.
So, I don't make resolutions. I'd break them all in the first month.
Must go. Mad Max 2 calls. Bye.

Looking Forward

It's the time of the year for ruminations and meditations and looking ahead. I htink most of us will agree that we are not sorry to see 2008 go. It was filled with highs and lows, for many of us more lows than highs.

It's the end of a error -- the Bush-Cheney Imperial Presidency. Good bye and good riddance.

Which lows were the most memorable?

First, it's the economy, stupid. That preyed on everyone's mind. My husband and I began thinking more about how we could help others than ourselves. True, our "portfolio" is thinner than it once was, but we thought about people who had no portfolio. We told our children that they could expect very nice cards, small gifts, and donations made in their names to food banks in their neighborhoods. It worked.

Then, it was political stupidity. It began with NY governor Elliot Spitzer getting caught transporting prostitutes across state lines. Hmm, we all knew what his wife thought as she stood behind/beside him as he resigned. It continued with John Edwards confessing that he had cheated on Elizabeth, "but her cancer was in remission." That made it all right. Then it was Sarah Palin, who now thinks she is the leading candidate for president in 2012. Keep thinking, Sarah. You might also consider returning to school to bone up on civics. Might help. And lastly, we have Rob Blagojevich apparently trying to sell Barack Obama's Senate seat. There were probably more examples, but you get the idea.

There was political history of the sort we couldn't have imagined when Dr. King gave his "I have a dream" speech in 1963. Not only did we have a credible woman running for president, we had an African-American, a Hispanic, and a wrinkly white guy. When all was said and done and when all the votes were counted, the iconic image of the campaign flashed across our television screens on November 4: Jesse Jackson with tears of joy pouring down his face. So much progress, so much more to go.

And of course, there were the inevitable drop-ins at Christmas. We had enjoyed guests throughout the year, but had planned on a quiet Christmas day a trois.
We woke up Christmas morning with ideas of a quiet breakfast, putting dinner in the oven, going for a walk, and opening our presents in peace and quiet. I hadn't counted on having two whipped houseguests collapsed in the dining room. What do you think? Did I do well in feeding them?

And now 2009 is on the doorstep. We have a new president coming in. He's inheriting a pile of problems, and we hope he'll live up to even half of our expectations.

2009 will bring more time to write. I want to continue writing 4-5 days a week. My first Mad Max novel, Unintended Consequences, is complete and out with an agent for review. Book two, working title Shades of Pale, is nearly done in draft. V-E-R-Y rough draft, but a draft nonetheless. I should finish the draft in the next month, take a cruise to clear my head and return to revies-revise-revise the draft. Book three is taking mental shape,, but I need to do a boatload of research before I begin writing.

To all of you who have stumbled upon this blog, thank you for reading my musings. Have a terrific 2009. See you next year.

Recessive Genes

With the election behind us and the economy sucking all the energy out of the news, I woke up the morning after Thanksgiving with an uncontrollable urge to DECORATE. The recessive Martha Stewart gene was ascendant and nothing I did drove it back where it belonged.

I dragged down a dozen large plastic tubs of Christmas decorations, put them in order in the garage, drove up to the storage unit and fetched the tree. We went green years ago with an artifical tree and have never regretted it.


No longer do I tramp through parking lots shaking trees to see if even a single needle stayed on. No longer do I harbor fantasies about cutting down a tree in the woods, since I learned years ago that perfect trees do not grow in the woods. They grow in tree farms. No longer do I worry about how to get fresh sap off of the top of the car, my hands, my jacket, or out of my hair.

After much fussing, I got the big tree up in the great room, a smaller tabletop tree up in the office and two other indoor trees ready for decorating. Nothing was safe. Not even the cat.


Every tabletop was a target, even the double dresser in the bedroom. I hung stockings from the chimney with care, including the one my beloved grandmother knitted for me for my first Christmas. Terry and the cat both have stockings, which of course will be filled by Santa on Christmas Eve.

I don't know what got into me, but I was done with my shopping before Black Friday. I did peek into Cyber Monday and bought a couple of things on excellent sales -- with free shipping, of course. And I dropped my cards in the mail a week later.

For the first time, I can sit back and enjoy the season and the reason for the season. It's a good thing I don't bake. With the recessive gene, I would have baked a houseful of cookies that we don't eat!!

And now, recessive gene, go back where you came from and do NOT return until next year!

On No! Not Another Language Mangler

I suffered through the Bush II presidency. Not because of his policies, because I agreed with some of them. I didn't agree with all of them. But it was his mangling of the English (or American) language that pained me. I read The Bush Dyslexicon and wept. And that was written before he was elected.

I alternately laughed and wept again listening to Sarah Palin adlib a response to anyone. Like many people, I tried to keep an open mind about her qualifications, and yet when she tried to speak off the stump speech, I saw the ramblings of a disjointed mind. The most highly quoted gaff went viral in print, in the blog-s-sphere and in cyberspace within minutes of Katie Couric's interview on 60 Minutes.

"My concern has been the atrocities there in Darfur and the relevance to me with that issue as we spoke about Africa and some of the countries there that were kind of the people succumbing to the dictators and the corruption of some collapsed governments on the continent, the relevance was Alaska’s investment in Darfur with some of our permanent fund dollars."


I lamented the fracturing of syntax to several of my favorite grammar police, all of whom returned my concern. However, only Becky Mushko outdid Sarah with her own spoof. Yes, this is an insider's joke, but I had to share the "sentence" with y'all.

"Well, yeah, but yanno that inspired me enough that I was like thinking kind of that maybe in the course of giving response critique-wise to certain folks who are not really seeking critiques that when they read, which is almost every meeting of a certain organization except, of course, when they're not there, which once in a while they are not, that we could maybe employ certain Palinistic rhetorical devices to maybe detrail the train of verbosity they exude or at least Palinetically hijack its caboose, ya think?"

Ya betcha! One seriously fractured sentence. Thanks to Becky for lifting my spirits and making me ROTFLOL.