review: ripper street season 2 episode 2

i'm at flickering myth writing about this week's ripper street episode. poor elephant man... read it here: monsters and freaks

review: vikings season 2 premiere

i'm over at flickering myth writing about how poor lagertha basically opened the season with a big fat bust. check it out here: no fury like a lagertha scorned

review: ripper street season 2 premiere

i am spending these next few months reviewing and recapping a few of my favorite shows over at flickering myth. i start out with recapping the premiere of season two of ripper street. read it here: take heed coppers, there's a new opiate in town

a band, a book, and february

i get so tired of starting every other post with something along the lines of "i'm so terrible at blogging lately."

but, well, i am.

i've been busy, i suppose. focused? eyes on the prize(s)? overwhelmed? lazy as hell?

all of the above.

the hooligans
well, the boys had valentine's day parties this week. boo was underwhelmed to say the least and kept begging me to take pick him up early when we dropped him off that morning. (he's in pre-k, folks. he's in that classroom three hours, tops...) dom came home with a bag of candy and his first crush. don't tell him i told you, but her name is kimberly. she's the smartest girl in class. and a brunette. i think she likes "my little pony" as well and that's probably what sealed the deal.

the girls, well...all i can say is there's only one belt and they're determined to fight to the death for the title. riley is a hair puller and kenna is a gut puncher. i'm never bored.

the man
i love him. i do. i'm a lucky girl. he and some friends went to a local "haunt" searching for some paranormal apparitions. turns out the bridge they checked out was like katy's own haunted disneyland complete with carloads of goofy paranormal investigators driving up and down. it's really a funny story to hear him tell it and i think it's so cool they're these big bad MMA dudes trying to coax ghosties out of the woods. conversations around our house are never lame.

what i'm working on

i'm doing my darndest to finish the rest of a story about a girl and ghosts (and a boy and some animal spirits on a reservation). i'm very nearly there and it's for a huge contest macmillian is putting together in april. i needed a cover for preliminaries and i'll share it with you. i know if this story ever gets picked up, the covers change and so do the titles, but seriously...the cover is so motivating. maybe i'll spill more beans about july's story as i go. she's so fun to write about and it's my first attempt to write the first person POV. i hate first person, but when i read it with other books, i get so drawn into the story, especially when its YA. i seem to write first person faster, too...i just miss being able to give the glimpse into the other protag's vantage. this one-camera angle is tough...

what i'm listening to
omg. obsession time.

 i haven't gotten this girly in the knee socks since i saw christian slater in "heathers" the first time all those years ago. i nearly pulled all my hair out with his turn as the shmexy will scarlet in the costner version of "robin hood: prince of thieves". anyway, i needed music to write "ghosts of july" to and stumbled up on the song "chocolate" by the 1975 and i fell instantly in love with the band and the man, matt healey. so much that i can't get his face out of my head when i'm writing my character, the teenage heartbreaker renn. so, there's that. poor renn, forever linked to an adorable little british rocker. i've pretty much downloaded all of their songs now much to my husband's major eyeball rolling and its' all i listen to when i write. i'm done with the fangirl thing for now, i promise. but you should listen to them. start with their song CHOCOLATE and go from there. good luck not dying from adorable british boy punk cuteness.

what i have been reading
i picked up myra mcentire's "Hourglass" (the first in a trilogy) on a twitter-suggested whim and was blown outta the water. holy crapola. highly recommended. for some reason, i've gotten sucked into two time-traveling trilogies now and for the life of me i can't explain how that happened. i've never been much of a fan of time travel and no matter how hard i try, i can't really get into dr. who and the tardis and all that space/time continuum. but, again...never say never. next thing i know i'm obsessed with a punk band from manchester and reading a YA time travel trilogy that keeps me away way too late.

here's hoping i don't wait until june to check in again... :)

hello, hooligans: dance party violence

hello, hooligans:

we were having a random dance party last night. it happens every now and then when we're trying to survive the 4 p.m.-to-bedtime stretch I call "hell."

it was a good song, from what i can remember. kenna was jumping around like mad, clapping and yanking the dog's tail. riley was standing on my legs, holding my hands for balance and sort of half jumping off, half butt-dropping like her name was miley cyrus.

the she did something awful.

she hauled off and hit me square in the nose.  out of nowhere.

my eyes stung and it was such a hard hit that my initial instinct was to smack back out of self defense. but i didn't.

and i think there's a life lesson in there somewhere.

sometimes, when you're raising kids they have a random misfire and hit you so hard (literally and figuratively) that you rethink your life choices. (it passes.)

maybe he world in general is a little like that, too. random hits so hard it makes your eyes water and your language crusty.

anyway, the only thing you can do is get back to the dancing and keep a watchful eye on the violent ones.

fool me once...

part advice column to my kids, part snapshot into what it's like when the inmates run the asylum. "a pack of hooligans" is often how i introduce my kids to strangers. 

Art School in Session (Lots of Faces in One Week)

I've spent so much time taking writing classes and attending writing conferences that I forget that I used to love art nearly as much as I loved writing.

I stumbled across Carla Sonheim's website by chance and saw that she hosted regular online classes that use a blog, Flikr, and videos and when I saw the average price (for the week-longs) was about $35, I couldn't help myself. My biggest problem was deciding which one to start with.

Dom and I decided we wanted to start with the Faces 101 (as in, 101 different faces in a week) because it was a live class with feedback from Carla.

Today was day one and we dabbled with our watercolors and blobs and created faces.

Here are a couple of mine:

 Henry. 

I was channeling a little Led Zeppelin with this one. I wanted to make him older but couldn't quite pull it off. Still, I dig his goatee.

Kit.

Doesn't she look like Kenna a wee bit? I love the purple hair and it just so happened my hair was pulled into a long braid today, too. Hooray for purple braids.

Georgette.

I read a lot of Jane Austen and Georgette Heyer. What can I say? Guilty.

Milton.

I've never known a Milton in real life, but I'd sure like to. I bet he'd look like this guy and tell bawdy jokes and put skim milk in his coffee. Good ol' Milt.

More later in the week!

...happy...happy...happy...

stuff of life: toy portraiture

Do you ever wonder about the secret life of toys?

I spend about two-thirds of my days picking up, sorting, tossing, picking up,sorting, and tossing the amassed mountain of toys our kids have and I often wonder what their backstory is.

I took my new camera out for a testride today and I couldn't get my kids to sit still for a some pictures for the life of me. But I needed the practice, so I dumped out every figurine I could find and I took portraits of them. They were more than happy to tell me their woes.

toy portraits, session one
january 24, 2014

1. Randall dreams about being a concert pianist and growing organic turnips. But mostly he hates having his ears chewed on by the baby.

2. Gertie's big moment, her very own portrait, was ruined by Construction Carl's immature photobomb.

3. After a decade together, Caillou and Leo find themselves in couple's therapy.

4. Marine Corps Moe (the dollar store's answer to GI Joe) really loves a good cup of coffee in the morning. And some guerilla urban warfare for lunch.

5. Bernard lost his pride in that last battle. He lost his arm in Tijuana a few years back while on leave.

6. Saul and Paul never could see eye-to-eye.

7. Dusty remembers the good old days when pirating was considered an honest trade. He'd give all the legos in Houston to be chasing the fair winds again.

A New Year, an Old Couch

I'm sure I had every intent to write between my last post (mid-November) and today. Truly.

But, see, I had this goal last year to write more posts than my previous annual record (I wrote 70 posts in 2009). So on November 18, I hit post #100 and I thought that was a fantastic number. And when life got busy and I realized there'd be no way to hit 150 or 125 or some other monumental number, I figured a break from both Facebook and the blog would be ok. Just to preserve such a monumental number like 100.

Then there's the fact that my camera jumped off the kitchen counter to the tiled floor last month. That was a pretty awful experience.

Last night we rang in the new year on our couch, hedging bets on whether Jenny McCarthy would get her midnight smooch with my favorite former New Kid. (Donnie. What can I say? I was never a Jordan sort of girl and Joey always looked too young. Danny looked like a caveman and Jonathon just wasn't my type. Donnie it was.)

Somewhere around 11:15, when the east coast had rung in 2014, we went to bed like a couple of old farts.

That's just who we are right now and I'm pretty ok with it.

2014 will pick up speed, I'm sure of it.

I had every plan to write a thoughtful, insightful post, but as I type, my toddler is on our kitchen table launching the four-year old's legos in every direction. He's screaming. She's laughing. And I'm zoned out. I'm pretty sure that sums up much of 2013...where we balanced precariously between moments of awesome (state parks, birthdays, the zoo) and pure junk (broken water pumps, bounced checks, rejection letters).

I don't expect much else out of life, I guess and that's enough for me!

Here's hoping you rang in the new year in style and wishing you love and health in the new year!

...happy, happy...

Hiding Under a Rock

The rock I've been hiding under.

Gah!

It's already November 18?

I had every intention of being useful this month. Honestly. But first there was this amazing trip back East. And then I had to recover from that trip. And then I had to prep for teaching some poetry. And then I had to help a small group of the students put together and edit their very own 4th Grade Newspaper....it comes out this week, by the way. We're excited.

More than anything, I planned on participating in Nanowrimo this month, but it didn't happen.  I always start Nano...for the past five years. Granted, I've only finished once, but I've ALWAYS started. Oh well. There's always Camp Nano this summer if I'm super motivated.

In other news, I'm making like my blog friend Misty and indulging in Hallmark Channel holiday movie sweetness. I'm surprised I haven't put on 20 pounds with this sappy, ooeey, schloppy stuff, but man it's fun. It's also fun watching my kids grimace at all the mistletoe smooching and hugging. Ha!

I also broke my beloved camera last night. Knocked it right off the counter onto the ceramic tile floor, complete with a sickening crack. I almost puked. Then I cried. A lot. My poor husband didn't know what to do. Photos might be harder to come by the next few months, so just bear with me.

Other than that, I started up a genealogy blog (genealogy snoop), mostly for me to document a couple of research projects and to stay connected with some other family history bloggers. Like I needed a new obsession, right?

...happy happy happy...

Five Days in Vermont

Earlier this month, my mom flew my boys and I out to Vermont to attend her 60th birthday bash. (Thanks, mom!) It was a lot of fun traveling with my sons now that they're bigger and (I'll admit it) braver than I am about air travel.

We landed in Boston where my mom and my uncle were waiting for us with the most tricked out of tricked-out minivans for the two-hour trek north.

I'll just say it now: five days wasn't even close to enough time there.  I haven't been back to visit family in ten and a half years....haven't seen the places from my childhood that are just now starting to seem interesting and beautiful and unusual, so leaving was tough. Coming home to my husband and my little girls righted the melancholy, but still. I wanted more time to seek out the places I wanted to revisit and more time with the family members I haven't seen in a decade.

My hope is to take my entire family (brace yourself, Green Mountain State) next fall in time for the color changing...so we can be those obnoxious slow-driving freaks that drive my brother insane each year. Leaf peepers, they're called.

...happy happy happy....

1. Andover, Vermont. This is  the Congregational Church in Andover. I spent time when I was reallllly young at a farm a few hundred yards from this church.

My recent obsession with genealogy has unearthed that I have had TWO sets of ancestors get married in this church. One couple in 1802 and one couple in 1844.

I also found out that while I thought Congregational churches were fairly liberal (I have NO idea why I thought this...seriously), they were very, very, very strict and would spend much of their time up in your business if you were a parishioner, even going so far as to fine attendees who decided to imbibe alcoholic beverages in the privacy of their own homes. Yowza.

Still a beautiful church, though...right?

2. Andover, Vermont. The town sign.

 I know the sign wasn't made in 1761, but the town was.

Vermont has such a fascinating history in the Revolutionary War and Civil War. They even sent a lot of men to "seek revenge" on the French and their Native American allies after the massacre at Fort William Henry during the French and Indian War. (Remember that scene in "Last of the Mohicans" where Cora loses her father to Magwa and the ambush after the retreat? That was based on the massacre at Fort William Henry in 1757.)

3. Springfield, Vermont. The view from Uncle Bob's place.

I spent two summers hanging around that pond and I was lucky enough to meet the granddaughter of the nice man who owned the farm you're looking at. Christina and I would ride horses all over the property and she'd show me the sugar trees her grandfather used when he made maple syrup each spring.

4. Chester, Vermont. The First Baptist Church. I can't say "Chester, Vermont" without thinking about this big red church in the middle of town.

Never been inside, though.

When I was a teenager a friend and I tried to open the doors one evening just to peek inside (I was 17, maybe?) But it was locked down.

5. Chester, Vermont. A little creek at the back of town. I'm standing on a suspension footbridge.

 My kids are off to the left, on solid ground, yelling at me to stop being so immature. I would jump up and down on the bridge to freak them out.

6. Chester, Vermont. I was a former inmate at this elementary school.

Kindergarten and first grade right there, folks. And yes, that's a gravestone in the forefront of the picture. It's not technically in the school yard so much as I'm taking the picture from the colonial-era graveyard that's situated a few yards from the school yard.

Graveyards are fascinating to me now. To my kids? Notsomuch.

7.  Chester, Vermont.  Brookside Cemetery.

I have an ancestor named Philomen Parker buried in this graveyard. After serving in Lexington in the Revolutionary War (his father was the first recorded casualty of that conflict...bummer), he moved to Chester with his wife and six children. A decade or so later, typhus would come through the town and wipe out his wife and three of his oldest children.

This grave is obviously not Philomen's. My children got grumpy after about twenty minutes of searching and decided that graveyards were NOT where they wanted to spend their Vermont vacations.