Poor Kitty
One of our cats got hit by a car. He’s been known to roam a bit, so we weren’t terribly worried when he didn’t show up for breakfast the first day, but by the second day we were checking with the animal shelters. He’d slipped his collar a few weeks before, but luckily he has one of those chips.
I originally thought the chip would act like a GPS or something; that there’d be a way to locate him the way you could a cell phone. Not so. The chip is scanned by the shelters when a cat is turned in. The shelter then checks the number the chip puts out against a database to find the owner. That’s how the veterinarian found us.
Animal Control had found him in the road and taken him to the veterinarian of their choice. The veterinarian then kept him in a cage, essentially untouched over the weekend. They waited until we came and claimed him, and agreed to pay the thousand dollars it would take to put him together again.
He had both of the bones in his foreleg broken and a smashed in hip. They put pins in the foreleg bones, a plate in for the hip, and completely removed his tail. Now we have to keep him in a cage for six weeks so he doesn’t re-break the vulnerable bones before they get a chance to heel.
The hardest part has been watching how much pain he is in. He has nerve damage in his hind leg, so drags it around when he has to use the cat box. He growls when he has a bowel movement. He bites when we have to move him around. We can’t even comfort him with petting very well because of the inability to move him and the restrictions of the cage.
Worse yet is the fear that he will never fully recover. I’m not at all sure we did him a service in keeping him alive. All I can do is rejoice with each little bit of progress he makes.
Sigh-ings
Jack: Why are you two sitting here sighing?
Jill: It’s the season.
Jack: What? Fall?
Jill: Football. We’re going to be football widows.
Jack: Oh! Right! I’ll go call the guys.
Previously in Jack and Jill: Photo Shopping
For more posts with 1 signs go to Keyhole Pictures
Talking to Walls
Can I confess to you?
I know we hardly know one another. You are always busy and
so am I,
And maybe that’s the problem.
I’ve outrun my life – left behind all connection
to friends and family
until there is nothing left but this hollow house
and the cats.
And a career that is too gone-to-seed for future glory.
Now, I have little to say,
but maybe if I tell you all about it
something will come up.
The challenge, should you choose to accept it, is to write a story in exactly 55 words. Flash Fiction 55 is hosted by the G-man, a host with the most.
13 Totally Random Words
Who, me short on ideas for lists? What gives you that idea?
1. Random
2. Drawing
3. Art
4. Guy
5. Gal
6. Herself
7. Reflexive
8. Mirror
9. Lake
10. Excalibur
11. Sword
12. Play
13. Theater
Whewh! I made it. 🙂
Suzie’s House 275 : Bruce
Bruce left his buddies leaning against the wall and walked to the middle of the hall as Gene, Tracy, and Justin got there. He put himself right in front of Gene and puffed out his chest like the bully he was. Weird. Gene was sure Bruce knew better than to get in his face.
It’s not like they were enemies, but they weren’t exactly friends either. Bruce mostly hung out with his gang, and Gene used to always be by himself. They’d traded punches a few years back, so they already knew Gene could whip his ass. Didn’t they?
The Serialists of August 29th
Dear readers, did you get a chance to check out Diana’s Diary? Don’t stop there. Ann Pino has a weekly post called Points of Departure. Check it out.
This is the hub for The Serialists, a meme for people who post original, serialized fiction on their blogs. If you have one or more posts you would like for us to read, please put the direct link(s) to the post(s) in the linky. Remember to visit one another and comment. We all want to hear from our readers.
76,806 Words
Sometimes things just come together for you. The book I just wrote was like that. Not so much the ending, which I changed three or four times as I went, but just the way the book came together as a whole was great. I’ve got a couple of Works In Progress that are like pulling teeth. To have one whip together so fast and so clean from a start with so little to go on was really fun.
This manuscript – tentatively titled Watching Uru – was something I did for the Camp NaNo National Novel Writing Month event for August. About a week before we were supposed to start, I thought I’d give this idea a try. I’d had a series of re-occurring daydreams involving a particular character. These daydreams mostly resolved into individual scenes, but they weren’t necessarily related, and I didn’t have a central premiss. I wasn’t at all sure this was going to work.
I opened up a spreadsheet and put each scene on a row in a particular column. There were about twenty of them, all told. I then looked for something that might be chronological about them, something that might be a theme, and anything even remotely resembling a plot. To my utter amazement – it had it all, and didn’t even have any scenes that had to be eliminated due to timing or logic conflicts. Everything could be made to fit.
I then added some scenes as connective tissue and fill in, numbered everything in the order in which I thought they should appear, and did a data sort to automatically put it all in order for me. I love spreadsheets for stuff like this.
I then went through and added approximate dates to show the chronology in a different column and in another put in what point of view the scene should be in. Normally I would go on to add GMC and emotional arc information for each scene, but my week was up, so I skipped it and went straight into the writing.
A few days later, I’d had some ideas for the way things should go, and certain details had an impact on the plot, so I went back to the spreadsheet. I removed some scenes, re-arranged a few, and added a few, all while still keeping my word count high.
I went through the same process two more times before finishing the book. At the end I mostly just winged it. My word count got slow, but it wasn’t worth messing with the spreadsheet again. Finally, I thought I was right at the end, so I put aside everything else in my life to focus on finishing. I pushed hard, but couldn’t finish it in one day. I finished it the next day.
If only all the books I write would come together so easily.
So that’s why I was so slow getting back to you a few days ago. My head was totally in a different world. Now I’m ready to get back to… um… reality? 🙂
Photo Shopping
Jack: Hey look! I can walk on water.
Jill: Show off.
For more posts with shopping go to Keyhole Pictures
Misstep
Getting cheated feels like
Missing the first step at the top of the stairs
foot hovering over air, heart thumping, pain awaiting.
How bad will the fall be?
What can be salvage?
Then every step to the bottom
is another chance to be hurt.
Clinging to the railing and feeling
Like such a fool. Such an idiot.
And from then on, the whole world is a staircase.
The challenge, should you choose to accept it, is to write a story in exactly 55 words. Flash Fiction 55 is hosted by the G-man, a host with the most.
13 Points in Building a WordPress Web Site
I recently completed my first commissioned web site. I used the installed version of WordPress and the Atahaulpa theme to create the entire site to her specifications. Cool, eh? Here are 13 steps and/or observations about the process.
1. Decide if WordPress is going to work. Although there are still some elements I don’t know how to handle, I’m starting to think you can do just about anything with WordPress that you can do with any other site building software. It just takes a good working knowledge of CSS.
Suzie’s House 274 : Heart Pounding Madness – the Secret Life of Emma
How could she do it? How could Kate be so bold?
Emma had sat in the chairs of the orchestra room during the audition with her heart in her throat. Even though it was only her friend up there in front of all these people, Emma’s hands had shook.
Kate was so brave, muscling her way to the front to play the drums before the other drummers, and going on and on until they made her stop. She hadn’t dropped a drumstick or messed up the rhythm or frozen in the middle or anything. And it all paid off!
The Serialists of August 22
Hey Nia, Got a graphic you’d like for me to use on your button? Normally I make people prove themselves a little longer before I make one, but I’m in the mood.
Hang in there a couple of weeks with me, Ann. I’ve got something in mind.
This is the hub for The Serialists, a meme for people who post original, serialized fiction on their blogs. If you have one or more posts you would like for us to read, please put the direct link(s) to the post(s) in the linky. Remember to visit one another and comment. We all want to hear from our readers.
TracFone and the Heart Pounding Madness
Madness as in anger, that is.
Tracfone ripped me off last week. I paid a hundred dollars for a one year card. I gave the card to The Girl for her phone. She told me it worked just fine. But then a couple days later she claimed they had given her the minutes/year then taken them back. But she kept the card. That should have been the tip off. They never gave her the minutes in the first place.
When we entered the pin from the card, they kept giving us a “system unavailable” message. Totally bogus. Don’t ever believe them when they give you that kind of message more than once. I called the number on the card and tried to add the time that way. Still no go, but at least now they told me that the phone was deactivated. It shouldn’t have been. According to the phone, we still had one day coming to us.
I tried calling the same number and talking to a real person. I wish I remember the name of the person I ended up with. She was quite unhelpful and just a touch snarky. Or rather, she became snarky when I got upset.
What’s to get upset about? The minutes had been put on a different phone. She would not give me the number of the phone they’d been put on. She wouldn’t do anything for me at all. She didn’t even have the kindness to suggest that I take my receipt back to the place I’d bought the card and prove I’d bought it. Smart me, I figured that one out all on my own. At this time I’m so angry I’m shaking. Then I find out from a careful grilling of The Girl that the card had never worked even once. Egg on face for Alice.
I called WalMart, where I’d purchased it from and told them my tale of woe. The guy there, Jay, was sympathetic, but couldn’t help me right then. He told me to come in the next day at 8am. This is a bit of a hardship for me as I don’t typically get to bed until around 3 am, but for a hundred dollars I’m willing to do it.
So I got my self out of bed at what I consider a barely-Godly hour only to have him go through exactly the same routine I did, and then tell me that as far as TracFone is concerned, he is no more significant than anyone else. It didn’t matter to them one wit that I had the proof of purchase in my hand, or that they KNEW the number the card had been put on. Without the serial number from the phone that stole my money, they wouldn’t budge.
I think it’s an act of God that I lost the stupid phone card on the way home. I checked everywhere, but it’s gone. I think it dropped out of my pocket at the gas station. That pretty much put the end to my plans to take them to small claims court.
Mr. Al took the receipt down and talked to management at Walmart, but again – no help.
The thing is, the card wasn’t out of our possession at all until it dropped out of my pocket at the end. The only think I can think is that it was scanned by one of those illegal while still in the store. It wouldn’t be hard for them to do it.
Moral of the story – DON’T BUY PHONE CARDS FROM WALMART! DON’T TRUST TRACFONE!!!!!
So, obviously I’m in the market for a new phone company. What do you suggest?
