Author Archives: Holly

kelly, cobie, and the war of the locust

Posted on

I accidentally planted cherry tomatoes instead of real tomatoes.  I ate about four of them and got bored.  The vines, neglected, have spilled over the little fence around their bed.  Somewhere in the tangle, a locust has been screeching for days.

Scene:  Steamy autumn night in Ohio.

Kelly:  I hear bug.  I KILL bug!  Lemmee at the bug!

Cobie:  You haz bug?  *sniffs*

Kelly:  GRRRRRRRRR! GET AWAY FROM MY BUG SNOW COUNTRY INFIDEL!  *outs self as were-badger*  SNARL!  SNAP!  *lunges at Cobie’s face*  Yappety snarl ARK!  *dives at Cobie in full body-check* 

Cobie:  *looks astonished*  *retreats to deck* *tries to wedge 100 lb butt under plastic parson’s chair in which bossmonkey is seated*  Save me, Bossmonkey!

Me:  Kelly, knock it off.  *pets Cobie*  Good Sir.

Kelly:  Gromma gromma gromma.

Me:  Nuh-uh.

Kelly:  Grumble gromma.  *goes back to locust hunting*  *catches locust half the size of her head*

Locust:  *is outraged*  BZZZZZZZZZZZZ!

Cobie:  *peers out of Sanctuary toward Kelly*

Kelly:  RAWR!  HE’S LOOKIN AT ME!

Locust:  *flies out of unexpectedly opened jaws of death*

Kelly:  Huh?

Locust:  *buzzes bossmonkey’s cheek*

Me:  *shrieks like a girl*

Kelly:  *tears ass after locust*

Cobie:  *twists neck and gazes at bossmonkey*  Chuff?

Me:  She can’t help it, Sir.  She’s a terrier.  *massages chest now aching from bugfright adrenaline rush*

Sorry

Posted on
Sorry by hksnapp
Sorry, a photo by hksnapp on Flickr.

woofstock

Posted on

Today (my youngest spawn) Zor and I went to Woofstock.  That’s a pet health fair held annually as a fund raiser at Wiggley Field next door to the dog park.  We took the dogs.  It stressed Cobie out; I knew it would.  It’s hot, it’s crowded, it’s noisy–these are things that stress me out.  Still, he only bristled at one other dog, and he came away like a good boy when I hauled on his leash and said come on. 

I’m not generally in favor of snapping around on a leash to correct a dog, but when he starts to bluster, I use what’s fasted so things don’t escalate.  Cobie actually likes other dogs; it’s the people that stress him out.  Me too!  I used to blame this on myself; if I were not such a hermit, maybe Cobie would be better socialized.  Then I realized one of his parents was also a nervous and spooky dog.  Now I think some of his spookiness is probably due to genetics, and maybe it’s for the best that he’s with a less social person who doesn’t mind not having a lot of company. 

Kelly, on the other hand, was excited but well-behaved.  That is, until she stepped out of her harness because she wanted to go off and pee in peace.  Afterwards she stood and let Zor swoop her up.  She wasn’t too crazy about going into the harness again, but she didn’t actively fight, either.  She’s my sociable dog.  I try not to think how much easier life would be if I only had Kelly.  I love Cobie a tremendous lot, but the truth is, he’s a huge pain in the butt–literally and metaphorically.   When Kelly gets excited she makes an ear-splitting ki-yi-yark! sound.  When Cobie gets excited he tries to yank me off my feet, and since he weighs a hundred pounds I figure it’s just a matter of time until he succeeds.

A fight did erupt while we were there, and I was thankful it didn’t involve either of my kids.  Well…sometimes I say Cobie “picks a fight” because I’m afraid that’s what it looks like to the owner of the other dogs, but I’ve never seen him flare up unless another dog was crowding and bullying.  Then he bristles up and skins his lips back from his ever so long teeth and snap-snap-snaps scant fractions of an inch from the other dog’s face.  I consider this a big bluster and a flat out warning:  Knock it off, Chief, I’m not kidding.  But I do worry how other people perceive it.  And of course, I get him away from whatever dog has pushed his buttons asap.

At Woofstock you pay $10 for a punch card and then go around to the vendors and pick up freebies.  It’s like trick-or-treat for dogs.  Cats aren’t disallowed, but most cats probably would not enjoy a day there.  It’s really hard to keep an eye on an antsy dog while you’re talking to vendors.  My husband was supposed to go with us this year, but for the third year in a row something came up.  I had to agree that what came up was an opportunity, but he’s promised no matter what comes up next year he’s going with us to hold Cobie part of the time.

The other reason he has to be watched is because everyone wants to pet him, but Cobie doesn’t want to be petted.  You’d think, or I would, that people at a dog health fair would be able to read dog body language well enough to know, especially when there was a big display about dog body language!  But they don’t.  Ordinarily Cobie loves kids, but he was clearly signalling, no kids either.  So I felt on edge trying to keep people away.  A couple of kids tried to sneak up and pet him anyway, even after I told them not to and he hid behind me.

Dear world, a dog that is hiding does not want you to pet him!

Lots of people want to be the exception.  They want to be the person Cobie likes.  Cobie only likes the people who gave him to us, and us, and one friend of Zor’s.  If you want him to like you, you have to come over a lot and ignore him until he relaxes.  That might take weeks.  Oh hell, I have no idea how long that would take.  No one except the one friend has tried it (did I mention I’m a borderline hermit?)  This is just my theory.  I think if someone came over a lot and ignored him, he’d eventually relax.

Meanwhile Kelly will be your friend.  She loves everybody!

Meanwhile I wish I had more places to take Cobie where he could be around people who would ignore him.  It’s sad that people stress him out,  because when he’s not stressed he’s an amazing varmint.

Frail

Posted on

Frail (Dust, #2)Frail by Joan Frances Turner

My rating: 2 of 5 stars

I loved this book when I began reading; the combination of lyrical prose and zombie dystopia appealed to me on every level. Unfortunately before I was a hundred pages in the style changed, the language became more common. There was a period in the middle of the story where there were so many characters, all with suburban names (Amy, Lisa, Billy…really? An evil overlord named Billy?) Some character names began with the same first letter, adding to my confusion. I made notes to tell them apart. The style then took yet another turn, and it seemed as though the author was channeling Dean Koontz during his Christopher Snow period, which might have been a good thing except the tale became somewhat surreal and even more difficult to follow. Also the odd combinations of simile and metaphor became distracting.

I give this book two Ds–one for Disjointed and one for Disappointing.

View all my reviews

further adventures of Hurricane Cobie and Kelly Doll

Posted on

Them’s my two mutts, in case you forgot.

Preface:  Once upon a time, Mr Moth expressed the opinion that Cobie wasn’t all that smart–not compared to Hannah, at least.

Because if I don’t, I suffer extreme heartburn, every night before I go to sleep I eat a mint.  It can be a Lifesaver or a starlite mint or a candy cane, it doesn’t matter just so’s it’s mint.  And because I have dogs, when I get down to the last bit, I break it in two and give a tiny piece to Cobie and a tiny piece to Kelly.  Kelly doesn’t really like mint, but if I don’t give her any she feels left out.  She tries to figure out ways to keep Cobie from getting her piece of mint without she actually has to eat it.

Two nights ago, she dropped her piece of Lifesaver on the dog bed and laid on it.

Cobe half-circled for several minutes, obviously agitated.  Kelly pretended to be asleep.  I pretended to read.

Because the weather’s been so changeable I have both my summer blanket and my winter blanket on the bed.  Whichever I don’t want, I put on the floor overnight.  Surprisingly, neither dog has tried sleeping on that blanket, but finally on this night Cobie went over to it and started scratching it up.  SCRAPE SCRATCH SCRABBLE.  Left paw, right paw.  SCRATCH SCRITCH SCRUPP.  On and on.  At great length.  I considered making him quitit but I wanted to know why the hell he was doing that.

So did Kelly.  She got up and went over to the blanket to supervise.

As soon as she arrived, Cobie made one of his on-a-dime 180s and dashed back to the dog bed where he quickly found and snarfed up the sliver of mint.

Kelly went HUFF! and laid down on the nicely scratched-up blanket.

Win-win.

I submit that Cobie has complex problem-solving skills.  He should go into management.  Or get married. 

another day

Posted on

This may be one of those ever rare two-cuppa mornings. Not so for hamsters. Zandy and Rocky are both up and zooming on their wheels, full of energy and creating quite a racket. It’s funny how they each pick and choose different things from their seed mix. Z likes the little seeds. Algernon likes the big seeds. Rocky likes everything but corn and the gray mystery pellets. (None of them eat those.) So I give Zandy’s rejects to Algernon, Algernon’s rejects to Zandy, Rocky’s corn to Algernon, and the pellet rejects to the dogs. Well, some of them. Cobie and Kelly think hamster pellets are the most exciting treats ever.

So. I have survived the first week of the new college quarter. I am taking Technical Report Writing, Art History, Drawing III, Digital Imagery, and Digital Typography II. That one’s probably going to be my favorite. It’ll be a tie between Technical Report Writing and Art History for which one numbs my brain the most. At least there are no business classes this go ’round. Which seems like a good segue into a Thankful Thursday on Saturday segment.

thankful thursday on saturday

1.) No business/management classes this quarter

2.) I went to the eye doc yesterday. More on this in a bit. The thankful part is, I really like my eye doctors. I feel like they care about me.

3.) I bought a tricycle. Yeah, a granny bike. It’s a hoot. More on this, too.

4.) Wagging tails.

5.) Flower bulbs. You only have to plant them once! And maybe thin them out every few years. I’ll have to check on that. Anyhow, I bought a metric buttload of them.

On the tricycle: I thought I would be able to take Cobie for runs with this, but he pulls too hard. So that part of my exercise plan was a dismal failure. However, I used to ride my bike a lot. A tremendous lot. But now I’m either too short or my balance feels off to ride my old bike. I’m hoping to work up to it gradually, and if it turns out I’m too short, I can always pick up a shorter model at a yard sale or somewhere.

On the eye situation: Two doctors. Dr P, who makes my glasses, and Dr L, who did the cataract. Yesterday I saw Dr P, because. Last summer I got new glasses, bi-focals, made. I loved them. Two weeks later (-ish) I was diagnosed with diabetes. By September, shortly after I started school, everything was blurry, but Dr L said there was no diabetic nerve damage, so I assumed I had messed up my exam. Maybe when Dr P was flipping lenses around and saying, “Does this one look better? Or this one?” I had answered wrong. I stopped wearing them, thinking I would gut it out until the insurance kicked in for 2012. By the end of Winter Quarter my head hurt behind my eyeballs so badly. I was spending 60+ hours a week at the computer, and my right eye watered a lot. It seems I had temporarily forgotten what an eyestrain headache actually felt like. I tried ibuprofen. Acetaminophen. Excedrin (since recalled, and no refund for you). None of them more than barely touched this headache. I tried decongestant, which I’m not supposed to take because of my blood pressure. That didn’t help either. My sudafed had failed me!

Then it occurred to me. Maybe this is eyestrain. I put my bifocals on and it got worse. I wanted to cry. Then I remembered my old pair, which I don’t like because…

Well. I didn’t like them because I saw this show about inmates at the Ohio Reformatory for Women. Every inmate I saw wearing glasses had frames either just like, or only subtly different, than mine. I guess I’m a bit snobby about not looking too much like a convict. But.

I put on my old glasses and within…ninety seconds? Slightly less? the headache was almost gone. Shortly thereafter, it was gone. Completely gone. Joy! Happy dance!

It’s always good to know your headache is caused by something fixable and not like, a brain tumor or something.

I called and made an appointment and got in to see Dr P. I don’t qualify for new frames until next year, but I do qualify for new lenses, and lets face it, I barely wore those frames for two or three months. Also, I really like them a bunch. So I’m ok with new lenses!

I asked Dr P if it was possible that my vision got better as my blood sugar came down. It really did seem like they were perfect when I got them and then, lickety split, they were horrible. And he said he practically guaranteed that was the case. However, on examination, he was unable to get my right eye to correct as clearly as it should, so he peered inside for a long time and said that my…well.

When they do cataract surgery they open a capsule of tissue that contains the cataracted lens and remove the lens. They put in an after-market lens, and kaboom. You can see! I’ll never forget the color I could see after that damned thing was gone. And I could see at night! Even if cars with headlights were coming toward me! It was a glorious thing to be sure. Cataracts can’t come back because the lens is gone; there’s nothing for a cataract to grow on. But sometimes after the surgery the capsule turns opaque. I forget what Dr P called this “posterior capsule opacity,” but a quick google search tells me it can also be called an after-cataract. This is apparently easily fixed with a laser during a painless five-minute office procedure. I’m all about seeing better and five-minute painless procedures. So that would be excellent if I could see well enough to read with both eyes again.

Especially that damn Art History book with its glossy pages and tiny print. I may keep that book after class ends, though…as a third line of home defense. Yanno, after Cobie and my old Royal typewriter.

maybe a feather

Posted on

I found this feather.

It was poking out of my pillow.

I delivered it and laid it on the dark blue spread.  It was perfect and snowy and so so soft, nothing I’d expect to come from something so ugly as a chicken.  But maybe it did come from a chicken. 

Maybe it’s a metaphor.

From ugliness, perfection.

i hate macs, the pity party

Posted on

At school we use macs, where you save by hitting Command + S.

At home I use a PC, where I save by hitting Ctrl + S.

The mac’s CMD button and the PC’s Alt button are in approximately the same place.

So when I knew my hard drive was in death’s dooryard, I carefully backed everything up…except apparently I never saved the pages and pages of revisions to godlight‘s first chapter.  Except I suspect I did try to save it…by hitting Alt + S. 

Alt + S does not save anything.  😛

Then, I imagine, I closed the document and Word asked me if I wanted to save my changes and I hit NO because I hadn’t made any changes since the last time I saved, or so I thought.

Word is always doing that, and I always say NO because I imagine I’m saving some accidental keystrokes, or perhaps some touchpad shenanigans that I don’t want to save.  In Word, if you save, run a wordcount, and then close, it asks if you want to save your changes.  What changes!?

Anyhow, all those changes are gone, and have to be done over, and as I may have mentioned, I have zero time lately and I’m exhausted.

On one level I realize these are only a few pages of changes I’m talking about, but I am just so tired, and on the edge of despair all the time.  I feel like I will always be the B student in everything:  writing, school, housekeeping, dog guardianship.  I will never be a star at anything.

How can you be a writer if you can’t manage to do something so simple as save a document correctly?

Yes, I am feeling very sorry for myself at the moment.

I hate macs.

Also Word.

I’d give up, except I don’t know and can’t imagine what I’d do instead.

Blargh.

it burns

Posted on

money boothHave you ever seen, probably on television, one of those booths where the contestant gets in and then  money blows all around while the person tries to grab as much cash as possible?  That is how it feels inside my head a good bit of the time, with ideas and thoughts instead of money.

Lately, I have not been able to grab much.

There’s just too much in there.

No time to purge with morning pages.

Under the heading of IDEAS-GENERAL, there’s the new beginning for godlight, the work in submissions.  There’s the draft beginning for Seldom Untitled, the work — allegedly — in progress, although as for progress…ahem, mumblemutter.

Under IDEAS-SCHOOL we find the ideas for Digital Illustration class, where I am currently supposed to produce a series of zoo pictograms (icons).  There are ideas for Typography (which class I may be the first ever to  love).  There are the ideas for Drawing II.

Then we have RESPONSIBILITIES.  Under this heading find laundry, menu planning, shopping (what all did I forget last time and what all will I forget next time?) and prescriptions (human and pet) and cooking and cleaning.  Haha! if you could see my kitchen floor, you would be as appalled as I am ashamed; I should be in there mopping instead of in here blogging about how I should be mopping.  Also, maintaining relationships (phone calls, e-mails).  Feeding people and critters.  Cages, litter boxes.

I could really use a wife maid.

Up until about two weeks ago, I found myself thinking, in a recurrent way if not obsessively, that maybe I was done writing.  I’d told my one good story, and I had no particular burning drive to get on with telling another.  It occurred to me briefly that maybe, just as I only have seven hundred to twelve hundred good words in me per day, I might perhaps only have so much creativity in me per day.  Maybe, perhaps, I’m using it all up on school projects. 

After all, I did have a burning drive to finish that last DI project:

But no burn when it came to godlight or Seldom.  No particular guilt over lack of burn, either — which was the most disturbing aspect.  Can a burning desire just wink out like that?  If it does go, does it ever come back?

What can I do to make it come back?

Even if I figure that out, should I make it come back?  Because I really do not have time.

I thought it was me, my inner whiner.  This is all well and good for kids living at home and men with wives.  I AM the home, and I AM the wife!  And:    Nobody else spends this much time doing school work.  I’m only taking four classes!  WTF?

Last week my hard drive self-destructed and the youngest spawn fell ill, so on top of everything else, there was alla that there to deal with.  The inner whiner was on a rip, let me tell you.

Then I heard one of the young people, a second-year student say almost exactly the same thing about how much out-of-class time we spend on school work, and I felt so relieved.  It’s not just me!  There really is an exorbitant amount of homework in the graphic design program.  So. I could just quit, right?

Quit and do what?  Sit around having plenty of time to write but no desire to do it?

Well I could walk the dogs, there’s that.  And spend more time trying to not think of all the things I’m not supposed to eat, which is always a worthy occupation.

For now, my writing goal is to finish typing in the changes to godlight‘s beginning.  When that is done, I’ll submit both visions* for critique and see what they say.  While that’s pending I can go back to work on Seldom in my — ahem, spare — time.

Meanwhile I’ll keep thrashing out the school projects unless or until it becomes more pain than pleasure.  For instance, I needed an idea for a surrealist drawing yesterday, and the girls in the basement are simply not cooperating.

nothing much interesting

Posted on

That’s what’s going on here, nothing much interesting…a whole lot of nothing much interesting, which is why I haven’t blogged for a while.

I can’t recall if I said before, but I’ll risk repeating myself. I’m taking four courses in school this quarter, Digital Illustration I, Typography I, Drawing II, and Organizational Behavior. That last one is about human relations and is eating my brain. The first one is eating my life. Drawing is interesting, but I’m so slow! I wonder if I’d be faster if I were younger.

Yesterday I was in the Mac Lab working on the Godzilla Galapagos Guava project. There was a second year class in progress, so I had my earbuds in, but I heard the instructor say, “You all grew up with computers.” He’s about–guessing–ten years younger than I am. I tried to shoot daggers at him with my eyes, but apparently the eyedagger quiver was empty, or else just old and too decrepit to fire. Well that, or he just couldn’t see me all the way in the back row.

Dude. I grew up with three black and white tv channels full of snow, and a bakelite wall phone with a three foot cord. Nary a computer in sight. In fact, they put computers in my high school the year I went to JVS, and they were installing the computers at the JVS as I graduated. And honestly, having come to my smallish quantity of geekery late in life, I don’t consider missing out on those dinosaurs to be all that much of a loss.

Ok, so swamped with school work, and taxi work. I’m going to try to send (my youngest) Zor to driver’s ed next summer, so she can occasionally free me up by transporting herself places. Next year the school goes from quarters to semesters, and I’ll have to take five classes instead of four, so I anticipate everything that’s overwhelming this year to be even more so next.

Next up, hamsters. I had originally kept one hamster, Dmitri. When he died of old age, I let myself be talked into getting two, because dwarf hamsters are allegedly so social. And thus I ended up with ten. Two of the babies didn’t survive, but six did, bringing the total to eight. After much angst, I rehomed four, and kept four. The parents Zandy (male) and Lita (female), and two babies, Algernon and Rocky (both female.) Algernon and Lita co-habitated in the nursery bin, and Rocky and Zandy had their own cages. But Algernon had developed a habit of chasing Lita around the cage, which was bizarre in my opinion, because Zandy got his own cage because Lita was beating him up. (Rocky got her own cage because one of her siblings gave her a bloody nose.) Anyhow, on Saturday I ordered two more Dmitri-style cages from Amazon. And on Wednesday I found Lita dead under the bedding of her cage.

I have no idea why; there were no signs of injury.

On that day there was also an outbreak of excruciating personal drama I don’t feel right sharing (which might tell you something right there, since you may have realized I am the Empress of TMI.) And I received a rejection letter.

I know we’re not supposed to blog about those, but I mention it because, unlike other rejections I have received, this one stung, and I’m not sure why. No one rejection has ever hurt my feelings before. This was a form letter; it even said in the body of the letter, “This is a form letter.” There was nothing hurtful about the phrasing. I’m not sure if the sting came from the fact that this was an agent I particularly hoped to land, or from all the other events of the day, or because it was a camel straw, but it knocked me for an emotional loop. I found myself relieved to bury myself in my drawing class project.

…

So this blog entry has been open on my laptop for three days, and I have no idea how to close it. I finished my drawing project and my exam, but missed the quiz by forgetting what day I was supposed to take it. The new cages arrived, and the rodents are installed therein. There was another minor disaster (by which I mean a loss of time) when two of the new water bottles leaked and both new cages had to be changed again the day after the new residents moved into them. I have two extra cages now, and the inner voice that whispers, “HOARDER!” can just shut up, because I didn’t need cages until I needed cages.

These are the sweetest, mellowest hamsters in the history of hamsters. They are like powder puffs with faces. Pygmy tribbles.

So. My thoughts are distracted and fragmented, and I still haven’t figured out how to end this. I’ll just say, til next time, later, taters.

Yum. Taters.

With a side of commas…