I love to write

Just starting the topic with that title made the song from Mary Poppins jump in my head “I love to laugh”.  Shit.

I love writing.  Even if I’m not top notch, even if I never get published, I still love to write.  Oh, and thank you WordPress for putting the word “Publish” for each post instead of “Post” so that it feels like I get published every other day!

It doesn’t just seem to be a hobby anymore, and even though I’m pressing out on my book (70 000 wds so far), it still makes me happy to sit down here and write something.  It’s not drudgery.  Not necessarily my blog kind of writing, but story writing.  I’ve been writing this novel for a few years now as I came smack up to a big writing block (creating a villain is harder than you might think).  But I got back into it after a little inspiration (*cough* land* *cough*) and have loved it since. I even get a little carried away when writing, like this morning I started this blog and wasn’t paying attention until I heard dh call downstairs wondering why I wasn’t ready for church… oops.

I’m leaving for holidays in possibly 3 days (dh wants to leave a day earlier than planned) and I think I’m going to pack paraphernalia for writing.  A couple of good gel pens and 2 writing pads.  I’ll be all set to roll.

I guess after Wednesday this place will be quiet until I get back.

TV? What’s that?

Am I the only one that doesn’t keep up with what’s going on in TV land? I read a lot of blogs and that seems to be the way I find out information now, but it never seems to be world information, it’s almost always about what is happening in celebrity lives.

I am not a reality tv fan whatsoever.  The closest thing I ever got to was Extreme home makeover, but was often too annoyed by Mr. Penner’s constant shouting (“move that bus!”) that I don’t watch it.  Of course there is the fact that we have exactly 1 channel that we don’t get a very good signal from and won’t get once it all goes to digital (which I’m tickled pink by as CBC sucks and should’ve been left to die a long time ago).

So I guess a very famous family with a whack of kids that were born at the same time are splitting up.   Ok.  I often wonder why stuff like this is actual news.  Why is it that the world loves to watch someone else’s life on tv and then is peeled to the news that their lives are going to shit.  Really, what’s the point?  We know famous people are people too, their shit stinks just like our own and they don’t wake up all pretty all the time just like us (ok, maybe Sandra Bullock does), why do we love it when they fail?  Or the fact that we think it’s okay to stalk them through the papparazzi because they get paid a lot of money.  Why is that okay?  We are stalkers, just indirectly, through all those photographs and websites that promote the posting/selling of those photographs (hello Perez).  I’m not much better, I used to read MSN’s celebrity pages when the gown pictures were put up because I loved to see them.  But why is it okay for the world to go further than that and know the very details of their lives?

I stopped reading MSN a long time ago, and I still cringe when I see famous faces plastered across the smut pages of trash magazines at the grocery store counter.  I hate that it means my kids are reading that trash, not understanding that it’s so wrong to even have that there.  Because we watch movies, my kids recognize the faces on there and are concerned when they see these people’s lives supposedly turned upside down, not even realizing that it’s extremely likely that’s entirely false.  Of course it becomes a conversation starter about print media and how bogus it really is.

I know it’s not as common in Canada.  Most often when celebrities come here there isn’t even a ripple started by their presence.  I remember seeing it in the paper once, but not since and I know some live in the area.  But we just don’t buy into the bullshit idea that it is our business what goes on in their lives.

Celebrities who don’t want the brou-haha of publicity, may I suggest moving the hell out of Hollywood?

One week left

Just a short week left (as if any weeks are shorter than others when each of them has 7 days … I know) and we’ll be heading off to our annual camping trip with the sil.  I am just thrilled beyond words, mainly because my mil and fil aren’t coming!

I know I’ve spoken about how wonderful they are, they truly are great.  Even if my fil is a redneck and my mil is too bossy, I’ve always been able to take it in stride.  But that’s when we are at their house for 2 or 3 days.  This would’ve been an entire week again, like last year, where it got to be too much.  I truly wouldn’t expect dh to have the yearly holidays with my parents, why he ever expected me to have it with his I’ll never know.

Truly the holiday did start out as a big get together for his family.  But it seems that I was the only one to actually pop the bubble of tension that was pulsing in the air when I confronted the Princess and requested that she be over with her kids instead of letting them come by at 7 am and run wild.  It started a bit of a war I’d say, and truthfully I’d do it again. Yeah, sure, the outsider isn’t technically supposed to be the one to say anything, but this tight lipped family would let the elephant remain in the room forever.  Something I just won’t handle.  We all get along to an extent, that’s it, and to force us together for too long of a period makes it icky and I’m not screwing up my only holidays for my mil to feel good.  Not happenin.

So this year’s holidays are going to be spent sans excess sugar fixes from Gramma’s trailer, no volun-telling of what to do and where to do it (oh my favourite one is when she told me that it was ok that her granddaughter – Princess’ dd – go to the bathroom in my trailer, like hell it’s ok, if we can’t because it’d get too full in such a long trip, she sure as hell can’t – and just for the record, she did not get to use it).

I guess I’m just looking forward to the peace and quiet that comes.  We’ll camp with them another time, for a weekend somewhere, but not an entire week.

Off to a warehouse store to stock up.  That’ll end up being blog worthy material right there because I tend to sing while I shop and occasionally even break into dance with a dd or two right in the aisle.

Good times.

I thought it’d be done

I don’t know why I truly believed and trusted in ‘modern’ medicine.  I thought for sure that the iron supplement would curb any future episodes.  Boy was I wrong.

He’s had 2 now since he’s been on the iron, and today’s was the scariest.  Of course none are truly nonchalant, but today’s was worrisome.

It wasn’t long, thankfully only a minute.  When he exhaled all his breath it is about 15 seconds before he stiffens and either passes out or seizes.  That means his brain is depleted of oxygen for those 15 seconds.  Today’s seizure, his lungs were affected.  Well, I should say the diaphragm because it was only until about 45 seconds into the seizure that he started to get a little air in.  That is an entire minute without oxygen to the brain.  One minute, can you hold your breath for one minute?  I can’t.

Dh and I had a bit of an argument after about whether or not to give mouth-to-mouth at that point.  He says no because based upon what he’s been taught you shouldn’t give mouth to mouth during a seizure.  He’s basing it on the idea that normal seizures are not directly from breath holding spells but an automatic system shortage, and often the person is breathing in hitches.  If you force are into the lung of someone who already has air in them you can damage the lungs.

But duh, we know he has no air in him because we watch him breath it all the way out.  Yes, sure, the text books don’t recommend it, but the text books don’t even mention this type of situation, they expect people to think beyond the text book, which is something dh cannot do.  I, however, often say screw the rules and go with the gut.

Pffft.  Shit this isn’t fun.  And it all started because his sister didn’t want him wrecking her cd player so she took it away and said no.  That’s it.  The pediatrician even said not to let this affect our parenting or we will have a monster on our hands.  Oh lady, that ain’t a worry with me.

Little shit.

To what extent

I love land, I think you all know that by now, but I’m wondering to what extent I’ll go to get some.  Sure, we’ve been pestering an old man indirectly about his plans, yes we’ve turned down a million dollar house complete with pool because there wasn’t a place for my parents, but how far will I go?

I’ve been busting my arse on my novel.  I really have.  I’ve put a few hours a day into it in the last week or so and it’s starting to flow again (that and I’m beginning to dream about it again).  I still don’t have a firm ending, but I have a few in my mind that would work.  I’m starting to think it’ll have to be a two parter though because I’m at 260 pages so far and I’m not even close to the end yet.  But I’m not sure if there’s enough for a second part or not.  I could just swing it up to 400 or 500 pages and complete it.  Then I’d have to work at submitting it to a bunch of publishers that don’t require an book agent nor only accept them on request (bigger publishers do that a lot, but smaller ones will take books on the chance that they’ll become the next Twilight).  I keep hoping that this will help be able to purchase the land for us.  I have no idea what a writer makes when they finally get published.

That is a distance I’m perfectly willing to extend to in order to purchase land bigger than a thumbnail. Sure, we could go out now and find a nice 10 acre parcel in amongst many other 10 acre parcels and conform to architectural restrictions, take an entire day to mow our manicured lawn.  But that’s not my idea of land.  I want to be able to stand in my property and not be able to see my neighbour, not just for the privacy trees I’ve planted, but because the distance and hills are in the way.  I want little restrictions on the type of house to build or what shingles to put on my house or what type of rock must be plastered to the front, or how long my grass is supposed to be.  I just can’t get into that, I’m not that neighbourly.  But how far will I go?

I’ve been eyeballing an herbal greenhouse business for a while and have even ordered some government publications at the library to research it a bit.  It’s not a business that takes over the life completely and truly isn’t meant to be a high source of income, just a supplementary one.   So that’s one.

The next one is a little more work.  I mentioned in the other land post (one of the very many, sorry) about another piece of land our friend has found for us (she should be a realtor).  It has a retreat centre on it that hasn’t been used in about 4 years.  I have no idea if it’s a separate place than the living quarters of the family or if they are just live-in hosts.  I don’t even know how to run a retreat centre, but I have an idea how to run a B&B. Hell, I went to University for a business degree, you’d think I’d have to trouble doing this (didn’t finish).

I just keep wondering how far to go adding stuff to our plate in order to procure some land of decent size.  I’d be happy with 80 acres, hell I’d be happy with 35 but those sizes aren’t for sale right now … then again, technically neither of the places we’re talking about are either.

Meh, I’m not good with the waiting, can you tell?  I just keep talking and talking and talking about it to pass the time.  You’ll either get sick of it, or start wanting land yourself!

Walk the time away

I was woken brutally early this morning, and not by anything in particular.  Dh would say that it was God urging me out of bed.  I decided to get up and go for a walk outside.

Oh man it was beautiful.  I can even say it felt really good, although my hips are a little tight now.  It was strange actually, to feel so good.  My allergies are lower than they’ve ever been and I only had to wipe my nose once after passing a couple of huge bushes of lilacs (beautiful but smelly).  I was rather surprised I guess.

I also got a bit of an eye opener as to it being such a buyers market here in my town.  There were 8 for sale signs on my walk through the residential area that took me 45 minutes to walk through.  8 houses, and a good chunk of them were well under priced from what I thought they’d be.  I guess not because of the house themselves, but because of their location.  These are water access houses that are across the street from water front houses, does that make sense?  The sizes of the houses are around 2500 sq ft, a huge chunk of house for around $600 000 to $700 000 for a 5 year old house.  Yes, a lot of money for sure for a house with very little yard, but these houses were probably selling at $800 000 just last year.  A strange time we live in.  Makes me wonder what kind of money would be normal for a 1100 sq ft 4 level split house that’s 30 years old.

My friend has been seriously helping us out in the land department, probably even slightly more than our realtor friend, which is highly understandable since the realtor isn’t friends with everyone in the rural areas.  She’s so funny, she has another property not far from her that is possibly thinking of selling.  They would prefer to sell to a Christian couple because they’ve run a retreat centre from their 160 acre with house property.  I am not entirely sure I’d like to run a retreat centre, but the idea isn’t horrible.  I know I wouldn’t want to run a B&B or anything, I just am not near organized enough and with homeschooling, I wouldn’t want anything interfering in that.  Then again, that could be a serious learning thing, but I think I’d still prefer a retreat-type centre instead.  It supposedly rooms 14 but I’m not exactly sure.  My friend is going to phone her and ask her if she’s serious about it and what abouts they’d be asking.  The husband has been farming in Saskatchewan forever and now that they’re kids are grown she’s considering just going with him now.  Wouldn’t that be a nice bonus.

Ah well, I’ll keep hoping.  I keep flitting about and tidying stray corners of the house that end up being hot spots for clutter.  We seriously decluttered with the garage sale, but I’m talking more paperwork, school supplies, etc that have just been strewn about.  And now that school is coming to a close we can tear down the ’school room’ I’ve had set up for a year and be done with that eyesore (it takes up part of our livingroom and although it’s not a large part it still isn’t pretty).

Time to move onto another cluttered zone in the house while dreaming about land.

Friends on the inside

Man it’s good to have friends on the inside.

So there’s a small glitch in the whole land thing.  Well, not exactly a glitch, but a different way of going through things that may harm our chances of having a reasonable price on the thing.

Sunday dh asked FNs about contacting the brother because we assumed he was the executor of the will.  Well, the executor of it is not the brother.  I kid you not.  It seems she very likely used the same lawyer/accountant/or something as who does her taxes.  I thought for sure a family member is usually an executor.

So dear brother is getting us the phone number of the executor of the will so that we can start talking directly to him about the land and what he is expecting for price.

Frankly in my mind it is a glitch because the executor is more likely to have never stepped foot on that land and is also likely to see the dollar signs based solely on the sub-division idea, even though the land has no natural place to divide.  But, that being said, it could go either way.  We could offer him our maximum and maybe he’ll take it, who knows.

So I guess it’s technically not a glitch, but a go-between.

I finally broke down and bought a new keyboard.  It’s a little strange to type with but it is such a relief to be able to type without throbbing pain after 20 minutes.  Pretty hard to write a book when I can’t sit in front of the pc for very long.  I bought the ergonomic kind that are not only curved for proper positioning (more natural) but split in the middle so my wrists are bent while typing.  It has been a complete turn around.  I only had to put up with dh bugging me about the cost twice (grrrr).

It’s still not perfect, my wrist is getting tired now, but it’s much better.  Now to go disband Mt. Laundry some more.

The Morning After

Now before you start thinking I went on a big bender, I was just looking for a catchy title again.  Got to keep you on your toes.

Camping was excellent.  I mean super-duper excellent.   I should say it always is, but last year wasn’t fun for me because Sweet Pea was a helluva lot of work and hated sleeping in the playpen.  Dh devised a way to lock him into a lower bunk of our trailer and he slept like … well like a baby, for the entire weekend!  He got mosquito bites, he got tons of bruises, skinned his face, ate some dirt, played hard with his sisters, all-in-all had a great time.

We all did.  I didn’t exactly get the exact answers I was looking for, but I got a general response.  I know the price range that we can start looking in, but to know for sure how into it my dad is, still not there.  But, while he was driving on the way out to camping he pointed out an area that would be just beautiful to live in.  My mom had a good laugh and told him that it was exactly like the land we are looking at.  In fact, after they arrived I pulled out my map and it is exactly South of Rose’s land.  Ironic, no?

Dh stayed home most of the time.  This was his weekend to homilize and he likes to have some quiet to prepare, so I gave it to him.  Thankfully he came out on Friday night and stayed the night, I missed the bugger.  Not really surprising, but I thought he’d stray from my mind occasionally, but he was always there.

So he went to church and afterward visited with the future neighbours (*snort* FN for short), the family we’re desperate to live beside.  He straight out asked what they thought about us contacting the brother (beneficiary) directly.  We don’t want to be poachers, or just plain rude when he’s just lost his sister.  I don’t want to swoop in, but I also don’t want to waste my time hoping if he’s going to overprice it.  I can look for other places in a more reasonable price range for us.  Anyway, we had another guy say to go for it because it’s not unethical, it’s just good business (a contractor, and very nice man), but I still feel wiggy about doing that.  I want to stick to my resolve even if it means the land gets sold to someone else who doesn’t mind doing what I won’t.   However, that being said, the opinion of the FN’s matter the most to us, so dh asked them.  Their suggestion was best.  The next time she talks to him she is going to ask if we should (or if it’s okay) contact him directly because frankly, I want to know his plans, or if he has an idea of the price he wants, or if he’s willing to put some caveats in there in order for the price to be lower (keeping it ranch land lowers the price per acre as opposed to subdivision possibility jacking it up).

Today will be spent in quiet because my girls are reading like crazy people (2 hours so far) and because Mt. Laundry needs attending to.  I’m probably going to go out and get myself an ergonomic keyboard too so I can not be in pain after typing this long anymore.  That’d be nice.

Peace out.