They're high rollers, these cats. Like seriously rolling in dough, some of them, with their furry little paws close to the trigger, lest you try to wrest some of their kitty stash away from their cold, clammy claws. Ca$hCats is one of the funniest, most perfect examples of social-media, which defies explanation, nonsense that I've seen in a while. And it just happens that Will Zweigart, the brainchild of this feline phenomenon, is one of the most adored and … [Read more...]
A Legacy of Strength
August 30, 2012 By
A friend of mine asked his eight-year-old son last night, "what did you learn in school today?" Multiplication is looming large, with it being third grade and all. He told his dad, "We learned about carrying the pig today." The immediate assumption, of course, was that this was some clever invention of an enterprising teacher who was hoping that a visual reference might help the mathematical concept of carrying numbers stick. Au contraire. No math lesson here, it was … [Read more...]
The Dog Stays In the Picture
August 27, 2012 By
Just call me Jean Angsty Whatley, I'm so damn full of angst. Don't know why.. Oh yes I do. I am going to have to get a real J-O-B now that the book is being birthed in two stages, which could be considered by some to be cruel and unusual punishment. Oh the labor. Don't get me wrong, I am as happy as a little girl, but we're having cover issues, for the print edition of the book. The ship has sailed on Amazon, it's up there, for sale, a mere $4.99. At 100K words, … [Read more...]
Coming Soon to a Radio Near You! U-Turn in Utah, The Sequel
August 22, 2012 By
Fate versus randomness. I don't know about you, but I still struggle with this. Although after last summer's road trip across the country, you may be saying, "are you kidding?" I mean when something wonderful happens don't we automatically gravitate toward the "meant to be" column of our lives? Whereas, if we just happen to be in a restaurant and somebody chokes on a piece of steak and we just happen to know the Heimlich Maneuver, wouldn't that justifiably fall under … [Read more...]
Cathedral of the Quarter-mile
August 18, 2012 By
The school buses rattled past the dogs and me this past week when we were out on our morning walk. Annoying traffic. Pooty little kids. I've been cranky. What's wrong with me? Oh yeah, maybe it's because I was getting ready to birth a book. I've been pregnant for twelve months and I damned near had a blood clot in my leg from sitting for hours, my butt boring a hole through the chair, staring at tracked changes for like the sixth time inside two weeks. Be careful what … [Read more...]
Deep End of the Pool
August 9, 2012 By
Bundle of nerves, I am just a big old wad of wound up. I just received the Kindle file to review for Off the Leash this morning and I'm excited on the one hand because every day we're getting a little closer to actually publishing the book, but I'm as nervous as a cat because then it's out there, you know...like out there. Exercise is good. That's what they tell you, right? (Liquor works well too, but is problematic at nine o'clock in the morning.) So I've been … [Read more...]
Anatomy of a Day
August 2, 2012 By
It started out with shadowed splendor, a reflection, of my hands on the rose print fabric of my wing backed chair, which really is a reflection of a writer with too much time on her hands and furniture that looks like her grandmother’s. It was the cottage look I was going for when I bought it and I do have, after all, a bungalow; a cottage by any other name. I was thinking about the privilege of time to observe the daily light show, which passes through my … [Read more...]
Keep Pedaling
July 29, 2012 By
I have been struggling with what to say about Michael. Three times in the past two days, I sat down to write his story. Couple of starts, then I’d get distracted, decide to pull a few weeds out of a few thousand out in the back yard, or take the dogs for a walk, or maybe have a muffin -- for any of you who are a) writers or b) saw the movie “ADAPTATION,” you know the culinary procrastination I’m talking about. On the third try, I got four fairly good paragraphs down, … [Read more...]
Thank You Barack Obama
July 19, 2012 By
Opening the mail around my house these days is rarely a pleasant experience, given the back drop of daily toil and trouble as a self-employed writer. Can you spell plague, as in that’s how vigorously I avoid opening the mail. Except today, I got little present from the Prez. Seems that Golden Rule, the medical insurance company from whom I purchased private health care coverage in 2011, was forced to GIVE ME A LITTLE MONEY BACK! Why? It’s because of the Affordable … [Read more...]
Freedom from Fear
July 17, 2012 By
We had scattered like cockroaches when someone flips on a light. Well, okay, that's a terrible way to describe what happened to all my former news colleagues at the ABC affiliate here in St. Louis when the wrecking ball swung, one round of layoffs at a time, until they finished the old girl off by imploding the local news completely. Sucks when reruns of Frazier pull higher ratings than your early news. Rats from a sinking ship then, maybe that's the best way to … [Read more...]
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