Escape

 At last the weather cooled and the ants mostly went back outside.  I still find stray ones walking one me, but the war is over.  It feels like fall and any minute all the pumpkin spice everything will start to show up.  I reluctantly set the next Molly book aside and started on the third Crochet and Crumpet book.  It takes place around Halloween and its fun to write about fall in the Midwest, particularly through the eyes of someone who has never experienced  it before.

I am rounding up all the regular characters and figuring out what they have going on.  And there is a murder to set up and solve.

Between the threats of a hurricane affecting my area, threats of El Nino causing havoc and everything else going on in the world, I think we all need a little mental escape.  Writing the books offers it to me and I hope reading them offers it to readers.  

What ever happened to a day with good news? 

It's September

I’ve always been fond of September, maybe because it started to cool off after summer when I was growing up in Pittsburgh. 

And then there are The Fantasticks! What’s that? A wonderful musical I became familiar with when I was a teenager and fascinated by the theater. Oh, I never had a good singing voice, but I did become a script girl when my high school prepared for performances of The Fantasticks by our actors and singers. 

Why September? Well, one of the primary songs is Try To Remember, and it begins: “Try to remember the kind of September When life was slow and oh, so mellow.” Yes, September. 

I don’t think I’ll ever write a play, let alone a musical, but I can continue to revere those who do—and remember the wonderful songs.

War

After a mostly moderate summer, the weather has gone to hell.  Really hotter than hell.  Having temperatures around 100 is not that strange.  It's the humidity that is unusual and means that's it doesn't cool off much at night. 

There is something else that is making things extra difficult.   Whenever it gets really hot, tons of ants come inside. The humidity seems to have made them even more fierce.  Bad enough that they swarm any crumbs they find, but I keep find them walking on my arms.  I see them and I feel them as the little buggars bite and it stings.  Luckily, from what I read, these ants don't deposit anything when they clamp their jaws on me.  

It's war with keeping them at bay.  I have a bottle of water mixed with peppermint castile  soap at the ready to spray them.  I'm not sure if they drown or the peppermint gets them, but it's pretty effective for the moment anyway.  And hand to hand combat when I find one walking up my arm.

I even found them wandering in the top of my coffee pot. 

Thankfully, they don't seem to have wandered into the room where my computer is.  I am doing what I an to finish the draft of the Molly book before I set it aside.  The last thing I need are little ant bites as I'm trying to write. 

Another Week of Work

 Work? Writing, of course. I’m making progress with the third book in my K-9 Crime Solvers series for Harlequin Romantic Suspense. Of course, our younger pup, Roxie, wants a lot of attention and keeps bringing toys over for me to throw, and, also of course, I mostly obey, as always. That interrupts my train of thought, but I get it back. 

Meanwhile, life goes on. We had to get our aging water heater replaced, and Roxie slipped her way into the basement area where the work was being done and let the workers know of her presence by being, well, her. She loves people, and she loves attention, and at least a couple of the workers made her feel welcome there for a few minutes before they had to continue with what they were doing. And fortunately, the work they did didn’t interrupt my writing. 

And all’s well now, including the water being back on. And our other pup, Cari, is hanging around as usual begging for treats.