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.

Still August

 Now that it's the second week of school, life has returned to a more normal pattern.  No more feeling like I was living in frat house where everybody was up all night. While I enjoyed some of the serendipity days where we took off on day trips, a regular schedule feels good.

After the year feeling like it rushed by, August seems to be lingering.  That's okay.   I like having a slow down of time for a change.  I am trying to get as much of the Molly book written by the end of the month when I have to let the next Crochet and Crumpet book move ahead of it.  

The area in Indiana where it takes place was on my mind this week.  There was a terrible storm with tornadoes that did a lot of damage in the area.   The storm did a lot of damage in Chicago.  There were tornadoes there as well.  The whole summer has been difficult there.  I get a local online newspaper from Chicago and I read how so many summer festivals were ruined by weather.  At one point, it rained for seven days straight.   

The next Crochet and Crumpet book takes place in the fall around Halloween.  It will be the first fall weather with falling leaves that  Annie Sara and Gray experience since they both  have only lived in Southern California.  I am looking forward to working on it and immersing myself in all the fall colors and crisper weather.  I had called the book, Falling Leaves as in tea leaves and tree leaves, but I need another title.  This publisher isn't into punny titles, so maybe I'll go for something like Murder Among the Falling Leaves.

Back to real life, Kitten's eye is not completely back to normal, but it seems better. Everything else about her seems normal so we are still letting things be.  

I'm still working on the crocheted wave pattern blanket.  I feel like I should call it the blanket that keeps me calm.   I have no problem unraveling when I make a mistake since it is all about the physical working with the yarn and hook as opposed to finishing the project. 

Writing About Experienced Adventure

I did some writing this week. What a surprise! But I also had an experience that I might want to include in a story someday—or not. It was scary, and writing about it probably won’t be easy.

What is it? Well, some of you might consider me silly. Others might relate to me. But here it is: I rode on a roller coaster.

I hadn’t ridden on one in years, but this time some family members were with me and couldn’t wait, so I joined them. It’s a new roller coaster, but I won’t say which or where since I wouldn’t want anyone involved with it to think I’m insulting it. And I do suspect they’d be glad to hear how scared I was, since scaring riders was probably part of the design.

Well, I got on it, and when we started off I was nervous immediately and closed my eyes. I’m glad now that I did since they stayed closed through much of the fortunately not very long trip.

Yes, I could get into more detail here, but I think I’ll just lock the experience inside me and hopefully find a way to include it in a story someday!

Anything scary you’d like to write about?