“Knowledge is currency here....” ― Joanne Harris, Chocolat

For those who haven't already figured this out, this blog was initially meant as a marketing technique to get people to buy my books. As a marketing technique, I wouldn't recommend it, as book sales have remained as they always have - slow but steady.

However, as a means of keeping ones thoughts sorted while possibly helping someone else to avoid similar pitfalls, a blog is, indeed, top notch.

Take, for example, a recent experience with Yellow Pages online.

For months now, I've seen advertisements in my Facebook news feed. YP has been advertising a FREE ad, very basic, mind, but FREE nonetheless. I had been to the YP page several times, but kept running out of time before I finished researching.

I finally got to their page with plenty of time last week and clicked the right button to bring me to the page where one puts in all the information. They offer 5 categories for your ad, and I filled in for 5 things that Northern Bard Publications is offering. I clicked the "done" button and, after several days, started taking peeks at YP online to see if Northern Bard was showing yet.

Then I got a phone call from one of the YP salespeople. For a nominal fee, Northern Bard Publications could be GUARANTEED to appear on the first page of the searches that I had put us in for. Overtired, lacking coffee, and trying to get off the phone to get ready for my shift at work, I told the person on the other end of the line that I had to speak with my business partners (aka my "co-conspirators", as they keep referring to themselves) to see if any of us had the amount anywhere in reserve, as the book sales wouldn't support the monthly fee, no matter how nominal. I took his number to call him back.

My biggest mistake was to NOT let him "show" me what a difference the monthly fee would make, according to the lady we lovingly call our "finance director" (although her primary line to keep myself and the art director under control is to say "We can't afford that right now. Maybe if sales pick up.").  She suggested that I go back over to YP and see where, exactly, Northern Bard Publications falls in the categories I put us in for.

Now, as I was told eons ago by my then-publisher, "One has really made it online if one appears on the first page of a search". 

I searched "Publishers in Gray, Maine".

Northern Bard, because there are very few publishing companies in the state of Maine in general and only ONE in the actual town of Gray, came up as number 1. It's rather nice when one has no competition to deal with, right?

I searched "Web Site Design & Services", as I've been taking care of the web site, The Northern Bard, since I was badly damaged in a work related incident and had nothing to stimulate my mind for about two months.  Northern Bard Publications comes up as number 2 in this category, second only to a service that is also in Gray.

I searched "Editorial and Publication Services". Northern Bard Publications came up as number 6 behind 5 other companies from other places that state "serving the Gray area"....but it's still on the first page and, once again, the only such company in the actual town of Gray.

Book and Catalog Covers also lists us as number 1. This one should make the art director feel especially good, as we are, once again, the only one in town.

Writers has the number 6 spot behind several other locals who have been at this longer than I.

Unable to reach the salesperson who had called me direct, I added a little message on my cell phone, as he had called while I was away from the cell, no doubt thinking he was about to make a sale. I suggested in my voice mail that he should actually look at the searches before he calls me back.....

Something tells me he may not call back once he's done his searches.

SO, my advice to those who wish to start a business and pull in some free advertising is simply this: Don't let the salesperson convince you to give an answer right away should someone call suggesting that you should fork over money for your free ad. Run a couple of searches on your own.

And with that advice, I'm offline to (hopefully) get some work done in my flower garden and gently stretch out my stomach muscles, which are still healing from a hernia surgery. Even as I'm thrilling over the idea that some red and black pepper added to the holes when I put in tulip bulbs last fall has resulted in a gorgeous grouping of multicolored tulips, I'm disgusted that, on seeing the flower garden had some bare patches, the maples and the huge, dying oak have tried to help me out by sprouting some trees around my daffodils, lilies, crocus, etc......

I guess you could say that the maples and the oak are sort of like salesmen, trying to convince me that I need THIS in my life right now....

And it will only cost me X amount in American Dollars.......

Maybe I should start insisting that every salesman has to convert the fee to Euros, just to see what happens.

"Opinions of others, voices all 'round"

The title for today's post comes from the first high school play I was ever involved in. The play is called "A Different Drummer", written by Barbetta and Booth, and it talks about the people who were considered outcasts in their day, but who brought about a better world. People like Martin Luther King, Abraham Lincoln, Dorothea Dix.....

I was a part of a traveling troop of performers by the name of Madame Sarah Heartburn. During the play, the troop removes the costumes we arrived in (we all wore leotards, natch) and "became" the other people the Story teller was speaking about....

In the song that I pulled the first line from, I was Abraham Lincoln, and the song went:

"Opinions of others
Voices all 'round
Loud playing bands
And cannon shot sound
Screams of pain
Cries for freedom
Blend in a deadly refrain

Is there a place
Where there is not
A thought of unkindness
A man who forgot
His pledge to his brother
Stand with him in trust
Forgive him his trespasses
As He forgives us

Opinions of others
Have we finally put down
The chains of the black man
In a burial mound
End screams of pain
Cries for freedom

Still men complain"

This song is going through my head today, as I go through the steps to put the web site I finally completed while unable to work post-surgery onto the search engines.  (If you're interested in checking it out, the new page for my publishing company is http://galadriel_emmons.tripod.com/northernbardpublications.html) Being unable to do just one thing at a time, I was also posting more information to my family tree pages, and when popping in to touch base with family members who are on my Facebook page, I tagged Ancestry.com's Facebook page. My thought at the time of the post was that, considering the genetic crap storm that I inherited through my mother, it might be nice to have anyone who follows Ancestry to be able to click on the link, see if they're related - and if so, since there are over 100 Canadians in the photograph of a family reunion before I was born, it might allow someone else to understand why they're having similar hereditary issues.

Can we cue a "wrong" buzzer noise here?

Obviously, people want to learn about their OWN family, but it's not permissible to post something about MY family to the Ancestry Facebook timeline! I'm back to feeling like Abraham Lincoln, trying to share the information I've been collecting since 1980 on my own and on Ansong. cestry.com since 2002, but having to listen to the opinions of others.....

I sincerely hope that all of you who come to visit me here and read my words understand one simple concept: If you don't like it, please move on. I don't need to hear "TMI", or that I shouldn't be saying such things, since this is my personal blog and I'm just voicing my own thoughts.

If you have a different opinion and want me to read YOUR thoughts, please give me the link to YOUR site, and I promise to read your words. I'll either agree with you or I'll smile, shake my head, and move along....

Forgive me my trespasses and I'll forgive you yours.

Capisce??

UPDATE May 22: A friend, whom I love dearly, posted a "Turn Back Thursday" picture on Facebook yesterday that made me realize I have a photo of me as Abraham Lincoln for the above song. For those who want to see this:

“He thrusts his fists against the posts and still insists he sees the ghosts.”

Stephen King used the line that I've used as today's title in his book, "It". The line is used by therapists to help children with lisping issues, or with stuttering issues as a little practice line.

This line, as well as Ozzy Osbourne's tune "Crazy Train", have been running through my head laely in reference to my daughter's cat, who is living with us temporarily while his "human mama" gets some issues in her life straightened out so that she can get them a new place to live.....

But let me explain what this has to do with a half Bengal/half Maine Coon cat.

In the state of Maine, as in most of the states in the Northern United States, we have a lot of creatures that migrate each year. For example, each fall, there are the massive flying "v" formations of Canadian geese that head south, and then, at this time of year, one can be outside and hear the distance honking of the geese heading back into the north country for the summer. The bird feeder in my back yard, which has mostly been visited by chickadee, blue jay and the occasional cardinal, is suddenly inundated with dozens of bird breeds, all flying in for a mouthful of seeds that they then take off to nests among the trees that flank the yard.

Meeko, being a typical cat, loves to watch my bird feeder, sometimes getting so excited by all the activity that he has to race from window to window, trying to figure out how to get out there and get a nice bird for dinner, since he isn't allowed outside unless he's on a harness with a leash. The thundering sounds he makes as he runs from room to room, leaping onto the window sills, has made me joke about him being "the conductor of the Cruzy Train"....

The past couple of weeks, the Crazy Train has been making a daily run, courtesy of a certain little bird, whom I happened to catch right outside my front window, where my husband left a ladder for climbing up onto the porch roof to shovel off the snow....

Now, this little one isn't the first woodpecker I've ever had near my home. Most of the time, in order to get photos of them, I'm creeping around the yard, listening for the distinctive "rat-a-tat-tat" in the trees. In the older farmhouse we moved into in 1998, it hasn't been unusual for me to get a photo or two of a woodpecker, quite possibly this same one, putting little holes in the wooden siding on the house to collect bugs. It was the persistence of the woodpecker working at a particular spot on our roof that made my husband realize how bad the old shingles were a couple of seasons back, and he has replaced a portion of those rotting shingles (and the supporting wood underneath the shingles as well) with new plywood and metal roofing that has resulted in him being able to spend less time outside each winter pushing the snow off the roof, as the metal warms up when the sun comes out after a storm and, with a rumble like an avalanche in the mountains, much of the snow now slides off the roof and onto the ground, preventing further damage to the roof.  (We still have some sections that we need to pull off the old shingles and replace with metal, thus the reason that there's a ladder propped against the front porch right now.....)

It wasn't until the first year with the metal roof that we noticed an interesting behavior pattern emerging with our little red-headed friend. It seems that woodpeckers, to draw a mate, will try to find the most hollow tree to make the largest amount of noise, thereby calling to the females from a distance away. It's like the louder the noise, the more apt the handsome male is to draw the most beautiful female, as she's going to be drawn to the sound that will indicate that he's the best provider in the area. I have friends who have noticed that the woodpeckers in their areas will find a piece of metal on a chimney to hammer on so that they are the woodpeckerr making the loudest noises and thereby drawing the mates from the furthest away. We noticed this phenomenon with the metal roofing and our little friend over the past two years.....

And this year, it's almost as if the metal ladder, less than three feet from a new front window that has a very interested cat sitting on a chair, is somehow proving that my little red-headed friend is the bravest of all the male woodpeckers who live nearby.

Each day, at some point, there is the distinctive "pimg-ping-ping" of the woodpecker tapping on the ladder. The conductor of the Crazy Train calls "All aboard" in his squeeky excited little kitten voice, and then the thundering sounds of the train echo through the house. If one is paying attention, there is a certain point in time when a prudent side step will avoid a head-on collision with the speeding locomotive. The dog still hasn't causght on to what that sound means, so there is often a squeak as the train passes a certain station and the dog gets cuffed out of the way.  Then the thudding noise as the train pulls into the station on the chair, skidding to a forced stop against the window.

Yesterday, while hanging laundry on the line on the porch, expecting that the Crazy Train wouldn't be running until well after I had put my clothing out to pick up the marvelous fresh scent of a slightly damp spring day, I discovered that I've become part of the "I'm braver than the average bird" game. Half-way done, I heard a ruffle of feathers followed by the "ping-ping". Two steps to one side and a glance down showed me the little feather-brain tapping away on the ladder, and a glance to one side showed me a very hopeful cat face peering out, his green eyes going from me to the bird and back to me. I could almost feel the encouraging thoughts, urging me to just move quietly and carefully to reach down, extend my claws, and catch dinner for my furry little grandson.

I suck at being a cat.

My "prey" looked up, got a very startled look on his little birdy face, and flew off to the rotting oak tree next to the road, where he found a nice hollow branch to continue making his loud noises to attract a mate.

Meeko, not impressed with my hunting skills, is still giving me an assessing look this morning that tells me that I really suck at being a cat, and he's not at all impressed with me thrusting against the ladder, trying to get it to move from the spot that it's been sitting for so long that the base has sunk into the soft spring soil....

And my little "ghost" keeps coming back to haunt and taunt both Meeko and I.

Hopefully, though, the appointment with the doctor in an hour will allow me to return to work, getting me away from my ghost......and the Crazy Train......and the accusing eyes of the train's conductor, who keeps insisting that he prefers fish over chicken, but he WOULD take that little red-headed "chicken" that keeps making him crazy.......

If You Get Ill Easily When Looking At Sutures, You May Wish To Skip This Post

It is now two full weeks since I went into the hospital to have a hernia repaired. Talks with my doctor, my mother (who is the reason I had to have this done, since she's the "source" of the hernia gene), and several others who had this done had me prepared for a quick and easy recovery.....

I have never been so wrong in my entire life.

When we bumped into friends yesterday and Bill was relating the story of the surgery day, I found myself listening in like a new observer, as I was too far out of things to fully express what I was feeling from behind the medication barrier short of there was pain. Lots and LOTS of pain!

I remember being given the first injection of medication that would put me under at around 7:30 in the morning. I remember them rolling me, bed and all, through the hallways, and only vaguely recall taking out my dentures to put into a container with some water until I was awake enough to put them back in, preventing any breathing issues while on oxygen.....

And I remember opening my eyes to pain.

Bill remembers being brought into the recovery space, where I greeted him cheerfully enough, but where my eyes were way out of focus and I kept drifting in and out of the edges of sleep. He was told they had given me some pretty strong pain meds, but since I have a bad reaction to morphine, they were concerned about whether or not I was painless enough to start getting dressed. An attempt at that dressing thing proved that no, I was NOT painless enough, so they gave me some more medication and waited a bit to try again.

This "test and give her more meds" thing went on for a couple of hours before he was able to help me sit up and finally pull my clothes back on. After helping get me into a wheelchair, he went to pull the truck over to the emergency room door while the nurse brought me down to meet him, concerned when I was still flinching despite having enough pain meds on board to put a bull elephant to sleep.

Long story short, they managed to get me into the truck for the trip home. Once there, Bill managed to walk me up the stairs and all the way to the bedroom, pausing only long enough to allow me to use the restroom, as his next task was to go and get the prescriptions filled so that I would be as painless as possible over the next two weeks.....

And neither one of us has come up with the how or why I managed to get myself out of the bed and partway down the stairs a few hours later, so drugged out that I didn't even realize what I was doing until Bill had me by the shoulders, asking me repeatedly what I was doing, and getting nothing for his efforts but a blank look, as if I was questioning why he was being so rude to me in my dream.....

This photo, taken of the surgery area just a few minutes ago, may or may not explain why there was so much pain and so much confusion that first couple of days, when my loving husband thought several times that he might have to load me back into the truck and return me to the hospital until the pain level was more controllable:

My mother, in a conversation with me on Saturday, stated that she had 4 very small scars from her hernia surgery that she can't even find now. My siblings have all stated the same. This battlefield of a stomach, with the lowest opening to the lower right of the screen and the opening in the center of the belly button being reopened scars from an ovarian cyst surgery I had in 1993, isn't quite what I thought I'd be looking at two weeks out. I'm still trying to figure out why there are 8 places that they opened me up, and, having joked with people all winter about finally getting my stomach back into bikini shape, I'm very disturbed by what this will most likely look like even after all the scars have healed....

Needless to say, I'm already discussing a cover-up tattoo before I consider showing this mess off to anyone in a bikini next summer (as I've already resigned myself to using the one piece I bought last year for this summer's swimming activities). My lovely daughter, somewhat tongue-in-cheek, suggested that the naval could be a bat cave and each small scar could have a bat to cover the scar tissue. My husband, teasing about the "Crazy Cat Lady" tattoos I have on my shoulder blades (a tiger on the left, an ocelot on the right) suggested something like a lion, with the nose at the naval, the mought at the scar just below the naval, and a big mane to encoumpass the other scars.

For any who haven't figured it out yet from prior posts, I'm a HUGE fan of J.R.R. Tolkien, and after thinking about it myself for a day or two, I'm thinking that Smaug would be an interesting cover-up characther, with his head and shoulders closer to the observer over the three larger marks up the left side of my stomach and his body and tail curling around to cover the other scars, perhaps even with the Arkenstone at the tip of Smaug's tail/covering the large scar at the top of my naval.....

Of course, if any of you, my Constant Readers, have suggestions that might work, I'm willing to hear them/see your design, if you can draw, before I sit down in my tattoo artist's chair to begin the inking process.....

I've already spoken to Jen in a Facebook message and have arranged to go see her some time this summer after some of the disasterous colors have faded from the "canvas" so that she can have an idea of the size and shape that her design has to be. Hit me with a message here, or drop me a line at debi.emmons.author@gmail.com, or come find me on Facebook if you have some design thoughts for me.

I have every intention of turning this time of pain and frustration into a beautiful piece of art work to share with the world next year and for years to come.

As to today: I have an appointment with my little dog and my car, as I promised Pookah that, as soon as I felt better enough to pull it off, he and I were going to do a "bug out day": going down to our friend's camp to confirm ice out on Little Sebago, taking the camera out to get some shots of some big red barns in the area for the Northern Bard Publications art director to use for the new cover for thier version of Night of the Tiger, getting some scented candles and insense to get rid of the nasty hospital/sick bed odors that it's not quite warm enough to chase out by opening all the windows and letting the spring breezes roar through the house, etc......

Thnak you for continuing to read my blog. I solemnly vow to be a LOT more careful about what I allow the doctors to talk me into "fixing" in future so that I don't end up losing another two weeks to pain (brain) killers. 

Coming to you LIVE and Unmedicatied.....

which is quite a feat, considering my innerds still feel like they're trying to be outards...

Hernia surgery.

May none of my readers ever have to subject themselves to such a horrid thing!

I was picturing two weeks of sitting in my office chair, working on a new project, delving into the 1700's with a couple who are, at best, kind to each other most of the time....

Who knew how often one uses the stomach muscles for things....like sitting...

So, instead of working on this next epic tale, I've been slowly trying to get ahead of the pain, so I can cut back on the drugs that fog my brain, and yet be painless enough to sit upright.

In the meantime, the characters have been waking up, getting active...and, arguing......

I'm finally getting off pain medications for my hernia and I'm going to need to go on migraine medications because  Sir Maxwell Colburn is a very stubborn man amd Amy McCullum is just as stubborn as he is.

The Tail of the Alien Baby

Okay, so I believe I already admitted in another blog post that the little bump that suddenly appeared in my belly WASN'T an alien baby, but I'm wondering at this point if it might have been better to have HAD the alien baby....

Instead, I had a run-of-the-mill hernia. I believe it's considered an umbilical one because it made its appearance right above my naval...where my umbilical cord was attached when I made my entrance into the world. This kind of hernia usually is considered genetic, and my mom had one just like it.

The repair sounded simple enough. A little snip-snip here. A little stitch-stitch there. A couple of days rest, and I would be ready to take on the world again. At least, that's how the doctors office made it sound. "Back on your feet in no time."

I probably should have asked that age old question: "Will I ever play the piano again?"

(Now, THAT would have been a GREAT trick, as I took piano lessons way back in junior high, but I was never any good. If I came out of a hernia surgery able to play like Beethoven.......)

So, early in the morning on April 13th, the doctor cut 8 holes into my abdomen and repaired the hernia. When I opened my eyes after surgery, there was an expected amount of pain, but after being given several doses of pain medication well before being closed behind a curtain with my husband to get dressed for the return home, I wasn't expecting the severe muscle spasms that occurred...

I was quite proud of myself going in for this procedure. I've been battling a bad back for several years now and thought I had a very high pain threshold. Although my medical records show that it has been recommended that I be on daily pain medications, I was quite proud of the fact that I have only been taking my multi-vitamin for a couple of years now, only taking the occasional pain killer when I really was in pain.

As the old couple in a recent Swiffer commercial says, "I've been living in a fools paradise."

I wasn't warned that the muscles that have been disturbed by the procedure used to repair a hernia like to randomly seize up for no reason for quite some time after the surgery. I guess I probably should have considered myself warned when, on being told that I get ill if given morphine, the doctor saw to it that I was given a heavy duty pain killer and a muscle relaxer. The fact that the spasms are still extremely aggressive and unpredictable (but getting less so over time) is what keeps me close to home for a little bit longer, as the idea of muttering a curse at my muscles at the wrong moment in public doesn't appeal to me.

So, while I gain control of my stomach muscles, I've been stepping out only as far as my porch, watching as some warmer weather finally is melting the snow off my flower garden. The crocus patches are blooming in white and purple again. The daffodils and tiger lilies are starting to pop out of the ground.

And around the spot where I've been trying to grow some kind of perennial for several years, a spot where I put in 87 tulips last fall just before the ground froze, I have oodles of little tulips growing to beat the band. Hopefully, in the next couple of days, I'll be able to gain control of the muscles spasms in my stomach and will be able to get outside to take a count of how many bulbs have sent up sprouts, but for now, it's certainly nice to see them all growing!

Goodbye, alien baby! Hello spring flowers!

I FINALLY found the Dilithium Crystals, Captain!

In short, Constant Readers, I've managed to get myself to settle long enough to get the web page building finished for the Northern Bard Publications web site!

It's been a hard slog, though, as I kept trying to NOT associate the page with my web site that I put together when I was out on disability for a back injury. Seems that most sites these days, however, don't allow for HTML programming, so I couldn't manage to get the books I want to sell up, put on the PayPal button for purchases, etc....

So, after starting the business with friends in October 2013, we have our products up for sale here:http://galadriel_emmons.tripod.com/northernbardpublications.html (There IS a "Mail" button there, should you have a question.)

Please feel free to comment either here, there or on the Facebook page for Northern Bard Publications (https://www.facebook.com/pages/Northern-Bard-Publications/366226983515750).

Thank you for visiting my various sites. We at Northern Bard look forward to being here on the internet for you for many years to come.