When dealing with Mother Nature, does one cry uncle.......or aunt?

I live in the northeast of the United States. For any who haven't heard, we've had LOTS of snow this year, and we have another blizzard warning up for tomorrow and Sunday.

All the neighbors are doing the run for milk, eggs and bread....which is sort of Northeastern slag for "fill up the pantry, because you may not be able to get out for a while". My pantry is always full. I have two young adult "kids" and three grandkids who come by looking for food. It never ends well if Yamma doesn't have something for the kiddies...

But I digress....mostly because I don't want to talk about that white crap that Mother Nature is ready to dump on us......AGAIN. We're already running out of places to put it, and it looks like there's no end in sight. Most people I know would love to kill that furry little rodent who, according to legend, told us on February 2nd that we have to put up with at least six more weeks of this nonsense before spring.

And don't try to point out that March the 22nd is six weeks from February 2nd. The natives turn toward thoughts slow roasting a writer over an open fire if you try to use the calendar and a little logic on them, but I can't blame them. Too many more weeks of looking out at more of this white stuff dropping from the clouds and I might start getting as antsy as they are.

But I have some projects  to finish.

LOTS of projects...

I'm also drawing my curtains shut as the newest blizzard (due to the predicted 33 mph winds rather than deep snow) makes an appearance. At the beginning of the winter, it's covering the dead leaves and lending beauty to the bare trees..

Now, it's just one more round of shoveling, snow blowing, freezing in the stiff breeze and harsh temperatures that are accompanying the snow. Muscles that are already sore from pushing too much snow in too little time have to be forced to do it one more time.

I'm going to ignore that part for as long as possible...

Why I don't get frustrated by delays any more.....

I used to be your typical "hot head". It was hard NOT to be hot tempered, with a French mother who could curse at you in TWO languages when she was REALLY mad and a dad who just had this look that you didn't dare test.......

When I'm alone, I still can curse like a sailor, but I'm starting to see a pattern in things in my life, and this pattern has made me sit back and ponder.

I've had those days when I've been caught behind a school bus or a slow driver for miles when I was already late leaving the house, on my way to something important. Yes, I've muttered and sputtered and said things like "Come ON! I'm trying to SPEED!"

Those are the days that I drive past an accident before I reach my destination. When the news story about an accident come out, the timing of my departure from my house to the site of the accident would have put me solidly at the wrong place at the wrong time: at Ground Zero when the proverbial manure hit the fan......

It happened again tonight. I see the pattern clearly.

My hubby plays in a pool league. Billiards. 8-ball, to be exact. Since he likes to have a drink with the team, I drop him off and pick him up, giving him a sober ride to depend on. It's how I roll.

The plan was to stop at a fast food place, eat, drop him off, and then go home. We got to the counter with just two people in front of us, but the elderly guy seemed to be having trouble understanding the concept of "sides" and took a really long time ordering. The lady behind him wasn't much faster. We took our order to go, as there was no real time to sit and eat. Hubby would eat while I drove and I would eat when I got home.

But he forgot that he needed to stop for cash for dues....

So I ran the extra errand, thinking I was hearing sirens, but nothing was coming past me....yet.....

After dropping off the money to the hubby and finally starting home, I was having a very odd feeling about those sirens. There had been A LOT of them. Not too far into my drive home, another siren could be heard, and this one was coming closer. A fire truck turned off a side road and turned in the direction I was going. It was a truck from another town.

FIRE was my first thought. It's a very cold winter. People are doing foolish things to keep warm.

Then red lights flashing in the distance in my rear view mirror. I watched, pulled over, and watched an ambulance rush past. I had just started to move again when I saw their brake lights come on. A little further around the curve, and the truth was there in front of me.

Fire trucks, police cars and at least one ambulance already at the scene as the ambulance that just went past me joined them. As I went down the convenient side road that has a full view of the straightaway where the accident appears to have happened, the number of fire trucks and police cars astounded me. The detour, with a hay field between the road taken and the usual pass, allowed a full view, but all that could be glimpsed were vehicles and humans.

A snowmobile trail crosses the road near the site of the accident. My heart sank at the thought that perhaps a snowmobile was trying to cross and got hit......

And then the timing struck me. If not for the other people at the fast food restaurant, I may have been going through that space at the wrong time......

Two more ambulances heading toward the accident from the town I live in brought a vision of being pulled out of my car had it not been for that delay......

I was raised in the Christian world. They talked a lot about God, the invisible being who watches over you and answers payers. I've sometimes had prayers answered, but not until I stopped going to a stuffy building every week, feeling the eyes of the scornful better-than-yous judging every movement. I also stopped calling the Divine One "God", because although I've studied many religions and am no longer sure what name to give that being.

I call it The Universe. It seems to be liking me lately, and the more I just relax and let The Universe move as it will, without me fighting it, the more it seems to like me.

I'll post an update when I find out what happened this time. I stayed up for the news, but they don't seem to have been informed yet.  Maybe tomorrow.....or is that today, since I'm up past midnight???

Goodnight, and may you be blessed.

The Universe Strikes Again!

It looks like this is going to be another "be careful what you ask for" year....with the exception of winning the lottery, that is.  Seems the Universe doesn't wish for me to get money that way....

However, when I want a model for a book cover who will work with me and the team at Northern Bard Publications, I get one, it seems.

The latest came just as we were scouting big red barns and/or silos around the area that can be photographed for the background of the new, improved "Night of the Tiger", hopefully with a sexy new cover and a new size that matches book three....

I made the above wish for a model, silently instead of on Facebook. The Universe responded with a slightly lesser version of the response for "A Wild Tiger's Heart", but not for book one, which also needs some editing/rewriting to correct a couple of minor glitches. The face it presented was Derek Yates, a young man who has the green eyes, the right hair color/style, the body....

As in this photo from FuriousFotog, https://www.facebook.com/FuriousFotog?fref=photo, Derek bares a striking resemblance to the Chase I see in my mind's eye whenever my character whispers in my ear, letting me know that there may still be another Tiger story at some point in my future:

Just about the time I started looking at other pictures of Derek, he was chosen as Ellen Degeneres new gardener in a contest. I thought the chance of me being able to hire him to be Chase on a cover were nil.....

But when I made a comment on my Facebook fan page for "The Tiger's Cub", he responded with a like and an email address. I responded to the email. A week later, we have a cover for the art director to "play" with, adding in my lovely lady Aloriah (yes, I know - it's hard to figure out, but if you break it down, it's Al-or-e-ah, and Chase calls her "Ree") onto the back......

Because I feel like being a little mysterious this time around, I'm not posting an advance photo, but I highly encourage you to check out my new model for Chase on his Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/derekyates or just drop the name Derek Yates into Google and follow any one of the links there. Should you need a model, he's very easy to work with, and I'm eager to see what Northern Bard Publications is going to do with the excellent photo he's selling us.....

But Universe?  Before you grant my wish for a pair of models for the new cover for "Night of the Tiger", can we talk funding?

Please?

If not the lottery, then by book sales?

Maybe?

*making a face like a pleading puppy*

The Blizzard of 2015, code named Juno

The view from my writing room window is slowly disappearing. It's on the second floor, and the roof right outside always seems to have an odd wind sheer, making a wave-like drift....

I often feel like I should be talking like a surfer dude when looking out the window looks like the hole house is shooting the curl.....and the effect will become even more pronounced when the storm ends and what's on the upper roof slides off the metal....

The rumble of THAT wave just before you find yourself in the middle of a closeout, when the whole world is naught but fast-moving snow. If I were to point a camera out the window on a sunny day after a snow storm, it might make an interesting shot......

*Looking out the window as a sudden gust makes me think about pointing the camera out the window right now....but then an old war wound reminds me how it feels about the snow*

By the way, if you happen to be in one of the New England states getting a whoopin' from Mother Nature today, and you're tempted to take a toboggan down a slope when the snowin's all done, confident you can miss that big oak tree way down at the bottom.....DON'T DO IT! I know from experience what bouncing a toboggan off that single oak tree at the bottom of a long hill can do to one's hand....and the arthritis isn't worth it.....

Now, if you'll excuse me, the reminders of some of my other "stupid pet tricks" are starting to wake up, as if the storm outside is calling them all out to play, and I have some things to accomplish before the much warned about power outages - probably with the help of a lot of coffee and some over the counter medications, to dull the screaming of the war wounds down to a whisper of a memory....

Happy Juno Day, Dude!

The theme for 2015 seems to be "I Have No Time".....

Time seems to keep getting away from me of late. It seems that I've just crawled out of bed when it's time to crawl back in, and everything that I intended on getting done seems to still be sitting on the wayside, only partially accomplished.

If I could pray for any one thing at the moment, I think that is what I would pray for: either more time, so that I can complete all the things I need to have happen in a single 24 hour period, or for the ability to move like the Flash.....

Can you just imagine if the second part could really happen?  A sip of coffee, a hearty Hi-ho Silver, and she's off like a rocket, folding a week's worth of laundry and putting it all away in 25 seconds flat! The dishes seem to fly as they go from the sink full of hot, soapy water onto the shelf, dry and clean for the next fantastic meal! The pickles that were put up in 2008 would be dumped onto the compost heap and the glass jars washed and put away for the next time that the hubby suddenly gets the urge to have a vegetable garden, as making pickles isn't really a pleasure, but a necessity in order to prevent grocery bags of cucumbers stacked up to the ceiling, slowly rotting into the wide, old barn boards that make up the dining room floor.....

(Hmmm......maybe I should have thought about it before admitting that there are still pickles in a metal cabinet from that long ago.  The people who produce "Hoarders" may see this post and think that they have an episode here in Maine, visiting a wanna-be writer's disgusting hovel where *gasp* spiders have made permanent Halloween decorations all over the house......)

But since I don't have the ability to move like the Flash - or even like the White Tornado I was accused of being when I was 18 - I guess it must be time to rev up my scooter like Dr. Nefario in "Despicable Me" and see how much I can manage to not complete in the next several hours before I give my pillow some face time...

http://youtu.be/Fh3ReMzB15I

Catch you all later, maybe, if I survive the attempt to get Shelob and her sisters evacuated from the house. However, if you step inside and see this:

RUN! RUN LIKE YOU'RE FOREST GUMP!!!!

Goodbye 2014, Whose Theme Was "Technical Difficulty"

This is about the time each year that I look back at the past year.

If gremlins exist, we were beset by them, beginning with the replacement of an ancient (in today's terms) desktop that was running Windows XP.....

The change-over of all the files involved new programs in order for them to work properly, and although it is not my forte, I managed to get things restored with the exception of our address book database. That had to be put into the laptop to work properly.

We'll just let that thought stay there for a while. My laptop is the only computer that has our address book database. A database that, if not transferred to another computer right away, tends to like to corrupt the media it's saved to.....

Next, my husband bought a laptop. It wouldn't finish the initial start up. It kept going to a black screen instead of allowing information to be entered. It was brought back to the store where it was purchased, replaced, and the initial start-up was performed at the store....

It, too, suffered from suddenly going to a black screen without reason. Numerous attempts were made to fix it, but it had to go back to the factory - twice - before it began to behave as if it knew how to be a good lappie.....

While going through the stuff with the laptop, our cable company raised their rates for the third time in a year, so we went to a dsl provider. A "downgrade", according to some, but a more reasonable dent in our pockets. More tech time to change everything to the new connection. It was starting to get easier, but the gremlins like to play games. The dsl company promises phone service without interrupting the wifi. Sometimes it works and I can surf while I talk. Sometimes the wifi crashes when a call comes in.

Interesting thing about the crash pattern, though. It seems to happen only when my husband calls.

Of course, shutting off cable means we're on an antenna for television. We somehow manage to get lucky, as the gremlins seem to like only messing with the high tech stuff.. An online assessment site tells us we can get 6 channels at our location. We get 12.....sometimes.....9 reliably.

Speaking of high tech, remember that database with our addresses in it? The one that only resided on my laptop because it corrupted the CD......and the DVD......and the USB......and, it seems, my hard drive....

The technician where I make my daily bread tells me that a failed hard drive usually happens in a Dell laptop within 3 years. I managed to make mine last for 6, which he thought was very good, but the database......

Remember that database?

That database didn't transfer with the other backup files that held all the other things I saved on my laptop. It didn't save on the USB where I put it, a single file on it's own little thumb drive, even though it opened - twice - when I checked the transferred file on the USB.

Gremlins love to mess with Christmas, as that's what the address book was kept for. That''s why I'm writing this HERE instead of in a newsletter to be included in Christmas cards. Just those who mail to me will get a card from me this year.....

My daughter, who moved back in with us after a failed relationship, rounded out the scourge on the laptops. Only problem is that she lost her recovery discs at some point along the way. I'm not techie enough to handle THAT little dilemma, as that involves finding someone with a recovery disc for the exact kind of laptop that she has.....

The gremlins win again, it seems, even at work, where three replacement printers for the front end and endless repairs to both the front end and copy center printers has become almost a common theme for each week.....

So, let me hand out the little Santa hats to make all my little gremlins look festive and wish you a Happy Holiday season, whether you celebrate Christmas, Hanukkah, Yule. Kwanzaa, or "National The Floor Is Lava Day". May you have a gremlin free 2015.

One last post on "A Wild Tiger's Heart" now that it's up for sale

I'm slowly tamping down little ground fires that were started when the paperback went live.  Seems that, even though I thought I had everything under the business name before publication, the printer had other ideas and tried to claim all the glory for the work.....

I really hate when I do all the work and someone else, like a manager, claims all the glory. It's like someone stealing from you, but they're stealing your energy instead of actual cash....

BUT, if you would like to have a peek at what's currently available or would like to keep up with the latest published works, the easy link to follow is this one, as it's going to be connected to everything I do in the future:

amazon.com/author/debiemmons

The options available involved being available world wide in an ebook, which the first two books were, being available to bookstores, which the first two books WEREN'T, and I'm also looking into how to make all three current publications audio books, as there are some who have asked about that option.  Watch this blog for announcements of when that will happen.

In the meantime, I have to take a brief break for the holiday season and to learn a new part of my job, as I've been promoted at the Staples "Gym", "The Company That Pays Me To Work Out", to an Inventory Specialist.  Longer hours, earlier shifts, and a bit more incentive to get my fanny perpendicular and out the door.

Speaking of which, it's the "Witching Hour".  As the old commercial for Dunkin Donuts used to say, "Time to make the donuts"....

Be good, or if you can't be good, name it after me.....