Fall = Love

Posted on 11/05/2012 by chick

Having seen no ticks this year (just tiny tick-like things we now believe to have been mites), I finally decided to brave the woods behind the house. I have been up there many times in the last few weeks. Fall is a particularly pretty season for hiking. Since I often take my camera with me, I made it my mission to capture the season in pictures.

These two pictures are of the approach to the place I call the Scenic Overlook. If you look here, you can compare these fall pictures with one that I took during the winter (“Lichen Green”). What a difference the season makes!

How I love the effect of the golden, late-afternoon sun on leaves that are also golden!

Though there is nothing better than a warm fall day, I also love the brisk, breezy days. Here is a picture of one of stunted oaks of the Scenic Overlook. The wind was trying its best to rip the leaves away, but the tree wasn’t quite ready to let them go.

And then there are the cool, misty days of fall. I love them, too!

Have you noticed that the leaves of different types of trees change color at different times? I love the late-changers. The smaller ones are like flames lighting the woods. I wonder what strange places I might go if I left the path, walking from flaming tree to flaming tree, as if following a will-o’-the-wisp.

Some of the bigger ones have the most beautiful, smooth, silvery bark.

Even the insects seem to enjoy walking in the fall.

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Saturday’s Mail

Posted on 10/26/2012 by chick

I probably shouldn’t like getting mail. I get a lot of bills. But I still eagerly await the mail delivery, sometimes even on Sundays and holidays because I forget which day it is. And sometimes I’m rewarded with good mail, like cards and postcards from friends and family.

Saturday, if not a good mail day, was at least an interesting one, with three items of note.

  • One was a $5.00 gift card to a grocery store. My husband had purchased a high-fiber cereal thinking it would be a healthy food for the kids. I ate some and was surprised by its sweetness. A close look at the ingredients list revealed that it contained aspartame. Nowhere else on the box was there any indication that it had aspartame. I was angry, so I called to complain. I hope they listened to what I had to say and will either remove the aspartame or mark the box more clearly. In any event, I’m glad we got our money back.
  • The second item was a bill from a collections agency. The original bill had fallen off my radar and it would have been nice if they had at least called us before resorting to a collections agency. I certainly could have and would have paid them their $20.00 had they simply reminded me. I’d much rather have paid the original company than a collections agency. It’s sad that so many businesses operate this way these days.
  • The third thing was my much anticipated rejection letter. It was a disappointment, actually, but not because my story didn’t get published. The disappointment was the boilerplate wording. In this letter was a list of reasons why a story might be rejected, and someone had checked off “doesn’t meet our current needs.” As feedback goes, it’s not terribly negative, but it’s also not terribly instructive. I wish they had included some explanation of what they do want.

So I’ve got $5.00 to spend and a check to write. Those things are easily done. But I also have an unwanted story and I’m not sure what to do with it. Publish it here? Look for another magazine publisher who might be interested in it? Attempt to illustrate it and turn it into a book for my kids? Tuck it in a drawer and forget about it? I’m not sure.

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Fairy Tale

Posted on 10/24/2012 by chick

The Night Fairy by Laura Amy Schlitz
Grade: B+

The Night Fairy is about a fairy named Flory whose wings get chewed up by a bat. Now flightless and terrified of bats, she decides to try a different lifestyle. She becomes a day fairy. She lives in a birdhouse, befriends a squirrel, and dresses in flower petals. Even the daytime isn’t always so easy for a young fairy, though, and this is the story of her struggles to survive, to recover, and to make her greatest wish come true.

The language of The Night Fairy is sometimes so plain that it take some of the enchantment out of the tale. But overall, I think it’s an enjoyable story for young readers (I’d guess around 7-8 years old).

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Planes, Trains, and Automobiles

Posted on 10/22/2012 by chick

Dear Marshall,

Most kids like to have a toy to cuddle at bedtime. Usually it’s a stuffed animal. Livia almost always wants her stuffed poodle and monkey. You, on the other hand, have to have your “car,” which is a small plastic farm tractor with a detachable trailer. It’s difficult to get you to sleep without it. And if you find during the night that either part is missing, you’ll yell and scream until I come into your room and find it for you.

It seems odd to me that you’d want cars in the bed with you. Don’t they dig into you when you roll over on them? But you keep vehicles around you all the time. Sometimes you hold them in your lap while you watch TV. You often bring them with you to the dinner table. You even put them on your plate, and then we have to take them away.

Here’s another example from today. At bedtime last night, you made a nest of sheets and blankets on the floor. I had to take it apart to make the beds, but you rebuilt it this morning. You were sitting in it when I came to get you for breakfast. “Look, Mommy. I got my nest back!” you chirped. Then you pointed out the toys you had put in the nest with you: an entire train, a truck, and your car. Only a boy would build a soft, cozy nest and then fill it with vehicles!

Love,

Mom

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Universal Mockery

Posted on 10/20/2012 by chick

I think the Universe may be mocking me, and it is using Three Minute Fiction to do it.

Stories for the last round of Three Minute Fiction were supposed to revolve around a U.S. president. In my unfinished story, the president was going to visit a locally famous diner. The owner of the diner, who disliked the president’s policies, did not want the president to come and he only went along with it for his wife’s sake. But he decided to play a joke on the president. He rewrote the entire menu, naming all of the dishes with catchwords from the president’s opposition. When the president finally visited, though, he behaved so decently that the diner owner felt bad. Afterward, he went back to using the old menu, but he named one dish after the president.

The reason I didn’t finish the story is that I couldn’t think of what the dish should be or how it should be described. That was the only thing holding the story up. The description of the dish is the punchline, and the story won’t work without it.

Now, as to why I think the Universe is mocking me, it’s because I have read only two of the Three Minute Fiction stories so far, but both take place in diners! In the first, a waitress is initially nervous to be serving the president, but he’s so indecisive that she stops being nervous and starts thinking that he had better leave a big tip. Hah. But the second story is the real jab from the Universe. A diner worker who hates the president gets to meet him in person and sees that he’s not so bad.

So clearly I’m being mocked for not finishing my story. Diners are all the rage in Three Minute Fiction right now, and I missed out on the trend. So sad.

Anyway, I guess I’ll try finish the story and publish it here. I still haven’t mastered the 600-word story, so it will be good practice, right? Then maybe I’ll be ready for the next round and be able to finish my story on time.

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The Story Behind the Pictures

Posted on 10/11/2012 by chick

Dear Marshall,

There is a page in our 2012 Christmas photo album with pictures taken during one of our hikes. It might even have been our very first hike together. I wrote something about that day as a draft but never published it. It seems a shame to simply delete it, so I’m going to finish it up and post it to the date of our hike. That way I’ll be able to include it with the year-end photo album that I’m working on now. Here goes.

While Livia was napping, I took Marshall for a walk in the woods with me. We hiked to the top of a rocky hill that overlooks a pond. The terrain was rough. There were so many rocks to fall on, not to mention a cliff to fall off of. Marshall handled the hike well, taking it slow, and allowing me to hold his hand, but I don’t think we’ll go back to the top again until he’s older.

He won’t mind, though. Neither the hike up the hill nor the view from the top seemed to thrill him. What he liked were the stream with its little wooden bridges and the pond at the base of the hill. The pond was surrounded by tall grass. The grass made him think of one of his books, We’re Going on a Bear Hunt. He kept saying “swishy swashy!” He wanted to know where the cave was (because if there’s a bear, it must live in a cave, right?), but when I asked him if he wanted to go on a bear hunt, he said “No!” Smart kid!

When we got home, my husband was doing some minor repairs on the truck. Marshall and I sat in the truck bed and kept him company. I gave Marshall my camera, which was a slightly crazy thing to do, given that it’s so new and expensive. He was careful, though, and he took some surprisingly good photographs. He actually picked interesting subjects and centered them in the pictures. I posted the best of the photos on Facebook and changed his occupation to “Photographer.”

So there you have it, another glimpse into our lives in 2012. It was a good year!

Love,

Mom

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Happy Anniversary to Us

Posted on 10/11/2012 by chick

My husband and I took a risk when we planned an outdoor wedding for an October day four years ago. The bet paid off, though. It turned out to be a beautiful day. Had we taken the same gamble this year, we would have regretted it. Brrr!

But we have always been lucky together, obviously. We have each other and the two most beautiful kids in the world. What could be luckier than that?

Happy Anniversary to us!

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Next in Line

Posted on 10/10/2012 by chick

Fantastic Mr. Fox by Roald Dahl
Grade: B-

As you might guess from the title, this book is about a fox. Foxes often raid farms for food, and this fox is no exception. Three farmers, each of whom is a pathetic excuse for a human being, decide to work together to exterminate the fox and his family. But Fantastic Mr. Fox still has a few tricks up his sleeve.

This is the first Dahl book that I really didn’t care for. The humans were bad and the animals suffered. The story wasn’t cute or humorous enough to make up for those things. Not recommended.

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Beauty Girl

Posted on 10/09/2012 by chick

Dear Livia,

Sometimes I call you Beauty Girl. That’s because you really are a beauty, inside and out. Even when you’re throwing one of your extreme head-banging, feet-kicking, nose-running tantrums, which you do often these days, I still think you’re beautiful.

And smart! And strong! And adventurous!

You’re still quite the climber. We finally had to get rid of the three gates we had downstairs, because you could top all but one of them easily. Those gates are supposed to work for toddlers up to two years of age! We didn’t (and still don’t) know how to slow you down, and maybe that’s a good thing. We just try to keep you as safe as we can.

I’m sure part of the reason you’re so good at climbing is that you’re tall for your age. At your last doctor’s appointment, you were once again off the charts for height. You’re not that much shorter than Marshall, actually. You’re growing so fast that it’s hard to keep you in clothes. I suspect that some of the winter garments I bought for you will not fit. My hopes of reusing last year’s winter jacket have been thoroughly dashed. I can’t say I really mind, though. It’s all just part of the way you’re growing, part of your beauty.

Love,

Mom

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SITY: Asters

Posted on 10/08/2012 by chick

The wild asters first start blooming in the late summer. I’m always happy to see them. They fill the borders of our yard with their cheerful white flowers and signal that fall is on the way. Now fall is here, and the asters in our yard seem to be past their prime, but there are still some pretty clusters of them here and there.

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