Yesterday, I got all the words I’ve written typed into the computer. Sadly, I couldn’t find the original SR file. Found 8-10 other SR files, but not the one I’d been working off of from NaNoWriMo. So instead of just typing in the 6+ pages I’d just written (handwritten pages , mind you), I had to type in all 29 pages of the ms.

I haven’t done that much typing in quite a while. It was nice to discover I still had some typing speed.

Excited when I finally finished all that typing, I went to update my sidebar progress bars with my additional words. I first tried to update the NaNoWriMo progress bar, removing the NaNoWriMo reference and updating the word count.

Hm. Not a good sign. So I tried again. I set up a new progress bar this time.

Of course, I didn’t believe the doom and gloom error messages the first time around, so I tried again. And again. And again.

No change. The evil monkey overlord was still thwarting me, and it would seem I hadn’t just destroyed the internet, I’d downright decimated it. Multiple destructions equals decimation, right?

Since I get my progress bars through a WordPress plugin, I went to the plugin author’s website. I searched around a bit to see if she had any reference to problems. I found nothing there, so I tried the WordPress forums. When I found nothing there either I fell on my last resort. I e-mailed the author.

Success!

Dynamite Deb (the dynamite part is my own embellishment since I think she’s just awesome), the author of the ProgressFly plugin, responded very quickly. With just a hair of research, we determined my problem is that my webhost updated my PHP version.

I offered myself and my PHP as a guinea pig for her, and she has said she’ll try to whip up a new version. That’s why she’s so DYN-O-MITE! She also let me know I could manually update the progress bars, told me where I could do that, and offered to walk me through it if necessary.

As you can see by the new progress bar in my sidebar, I managed to suss out the manual updating method on my own. So there you go. As of this writing, I’ve got a whopping 8% of my story written (in my defense, I have mapped out the whole thing). But hey, that’s at least 3% more than I had last week!

All week, as I ran through my daily chores and errands, my mind’s been whirling. Could I blog this? Would this be interesting enough to publish online? I’m sure you can deduce the answer to those questions based on the number of posts since last Saturday’s Saturday Shot.

(BIG FAT GOOSE EGG!)

But it seems that over the last couple days, a voice has returned to my head. I can barely hear it; it’s little more than a whisper. But it’s there. And it’s inspired me to pick up my pen and spiral notebook again.

This week, as LittleDude has been learning the ins and outs of Tae Kwon Do, I’ve been writing in the parking lot. With my iPod firmly in my ears, I’ve actually been producing pages!

First it was the additional scene for IH I’ve been talking about. I finished that one the day before yesterday, now I just need to type it into the computer and integrate it into the story. I’m not anticipating a huge problem with that, but you never know.

Then, the night before last, I pulled out my story folders for SR. I perused the research I’d done. Studied my FDi30D worksheets. Read the pages I produced during my short-lived stint with NaNoWriMo. And you know what? A lot of what I found in those pages was actually pretty good, if you overlook the typos, that is.

I mean, really. Who the hell is Jerry Spring and how did he get a show?

I’m also still a little unsure about the dead husband returning as a ghost mentor for Rebecca, but the dialogue from that scene is so good, I decided to leave it for now.

Anyway, after I did all that, I added more to that story, as well.

I’m feeling pretty damn good right now. After what seemed to be an interminable dry spell, I’ve actually written something. And once I finish this post, I’m going to type it up, print it out, and see where I’m at.

(Besides still ending my sentences with prepositions. I guess it’s still that running with scissors thing. )

click on the photo for a larger version

I haven’t done a Saturday Shot in quite some time, but since I recently processed this photo for my mother, I thought I’d revive the SS and share.

Remember the lunar eclipse on February 20th of this year? When it first started, my family was peeking out the door at it trying to spot the moon between the clouds (Atlanta was under pretty heavy cloud cover that night), marveling at the wonder. SoundGuy had just purchased a really nice video camera, so he decided to try filming it. After quite some time of seeing nothing but gray clouds, I gave up and went inside to watch television.

Moments later, SoundGuy was hollering for me to come back outside. And to bring my camera. When I reached the front porch, I saw that there was a huge break in the clouds, revealing the partially eclipsed moon.

As quickly as I could, I changed the lenses on my camera and added an extender. I mean, the moon really is pretty far away. Once I set up and started shooting, I ran into a problem. My long lens (the one I also use for all my sports shooting) is pretty heavy, and it’s hard for me to shoot steady heandheld with it. I needed a tripod. But my camera was set up for my monopod (which is also what I use for sports shooting), not my tripod. Not knowing how long the break in the clouds would last, I decided to try shooting with the monopod.

It wasn’t as steady was I would have liked, especially with the necessity for longer exposure. I ended up with a lot of blurred shots, ranging from unrecognizably blurry to only just blurry enough to make me mad.

Our front porch has a wrought iron railing with brick pillars, so I tried bracing the monopod in the corner against the iron and brick. It wasn’t perfectly stable, but it was much better. And it would have to do.

As you can see with this Saturday Shot, I did manage to get a few sharp shots. Once of these days, when I have some spare time ( ), I’ll be combining three of those shots into one nice time-lapse photo to frame and hang on my wall.

All I need to do is choose three shots…

Yesterday, it was a trip to the grocery store that boosted my spirit and made me smile. Why? Because as I pulled into the parking lot, some guy in a delivery truck whistled at me.

Now, I didn’t see this person, which means I don’t know if he was even remotely attractive. But that doesn’t matter. I don’t get whistled at much anymore, so when it does happen, it’s a pretty big deal.

Kind of like the rare occasions I’m called miss instead of ma’am.

But this guy didn’t call me anything. And what he did is described by some as disrespectful, or annoying, or even objectifying.

To that, I say pfffffthbbbbbbbbb!

Thank you, mystery man in the delivery truck, for brightening my day.

Anyway, he called to see how we’re doing in the aftermath of the accident. At some point in the conversation, he became horrified to learn I had never watched Northern Exposure. I had to explain that, heck, I didn’t even start watching Everybody Loves Raymond until the show was syndicated. That didn’t seem to sway him.

Guess what arrived on my doorstep yesterday. The full series DVD set of Northern Exposure. Of course, I had to start watching immediately. What fun! I’m almost through season 1.

47 days and counting until we head back out to Yellowstone.

MiniMe has two makeup soccer games this weekend. The one on Sunday is a makeup of a rainout. The one on Saturday is the makeup of the game cancelled because of the accident. MiniMe’s looking forward to finally playing that team, but I’m dreading the trip. SoundGuy promises we’ll take a different route.

With gas and food prices skyrocketing, money’s getting tighter and tighter. I saw a piece on television about the Grocery Game and decided to give it a try. Has anybody played yet?

It’s been a long time since I’ve written anything, but I’m thinking I might give it a shot today. I ran across an old idea I’d jotted down in my dream journal (that hasn’t seen much action lately, either), and I thought it sounded like the kernel for a pretty damned good story. I’m not going to write that one yet, but I think I might finally get around to adding a scene to IH that will solve one of the problems the editor cited when she rejected that ms.

Whenever people meet Stella for the first time, they always say the same thing: It’ll be hard to keep clean. Yes, I know she’s black, and yes, I know black’s hard to keep clean. This isn’t my first dance at the prom. But SoundGuy wanted to go with a used vehicle, and as far as used Expeditions, we had two color choices at our local dealership: Hard to Keep Clean Black or Hi, I Work For the City White.

I chose black.

MiniMe’s last soccer game was miserable. We played what had to be the most unsportsman like team in the our state. One of their players kicked MiniMe in the neck and then laughed. And after the game during the good game handshake, two of their players spit on their hands. Not cool.

What is cool is despite dropping the subject with our girls, our coach didn’t drop it with the other coach. And yesterday we received an apology letter from that other coach and from the two offensive players. Along with the promise of repercussions for those players.

Despite that, I’m still stewing over the whole thing.

SoundGuy’s been hard at work on Stella, trying to make me more comfortable with her. He spent hours cleaning the interior, gave the stereo more punch (good grief! What did the previous owner do to this truck?), and now he’s starting on the extra goodies. Last week it was rain and bug deflectors. Today he ordered a dash kit to dress it up. And now he’s talking chrome accents. Men and their toys…

I’ll quit rambling now. Guess I was just making up for lost time. I need to go finish laundry, put dinner in the crockpot, and watch more Northern Exposure. Have a great weekend!

I remember the look on MiniMe’s face not even a month ago when I showed her the newspaper article saying the gray wolf had been delisted. I remember how angry she became. And how confused. “How could anybody want to kill one of those faces?” she asked.

My daughter is a true wolf-lover.

Wolf 253M, affectionately known in the Yellowstone area as “Limpy” because of an injury resulting from a standoff when he was just a young pup, became one of the first casualties of the delisting of the gray wolf. When the government delisted the wolves, they turned over their management to the states, and Wyoming saw fit to classify wolves as predators throughout most of the state, meaning hunters may shoot the animal on sight.

Wolf 253M, an eight-year-old collared wolf from Yellowstone, has been managed right out of existence.

Brian Connolly did a lovely video about 253M that not only tells his story, but for me, asks all the right questions. Embedding of the video was disabled, but if you’re interested, you can see it here.

Obviously, opinions differ on this issue; there are many who feel it’s long past time that wolves are open to hunting. I’m not one of them.

Defenders of Wildlife has a letter-writing campaign going. If you’d like to participate, the link is http://action.defenders.org/ourwolves.

Okay, so the real reason I’m posting this is I finally got the pictures downloaded from my phone. But it’s still fun. Trust me.

A couple weeks ago, I had to take LittleDude to his semi-yearly visit with his allergy specialist. The doctor’s office is about a 30 minute drive from my house (we do live in the sticks, after all). We left early because I no longer had the directions, which had been saved in Sophie’s nav system. I was flying by the seat of my pants on this one, so I played it smart. I gave myself an hour to get there, figuring at worst, I’d do some reading while we waited; LittleDude could play the video game they have just for kids in the waiting room.

Forty-five minutes into the trip, I called SoundGuy.

“You’re not going to believe this,” I said. I was rolling my eyes, but he couldn’t see me.

“Not going to believe what?” he asked.

“I’m stuck behind a house.”

Nothing but silence on his end of the line.

“Not in a I drove behind somebody’s house and got stuck in a giant mud puddle sort of way, you understand,” I said. “I mean I’m literally stuck behind a house. There’s a damn house in front of me, blocking the road.”

“How the hell…?”

“They’re moving it,” I said, answer the question he hadn’t finished asking. “They’ve got this stupid damn house on a trailer and they’re moving it. There are guys in a truck in front of it, driving ahead and pulling mailbox posts out of the ground so the house won’t cream them along the way.”

SoundGuy laughed. And laughed. And laughed. “Leave it to you,” he said. “Is it at least a fast-moving house?”

“Dammit,” I said. In my head, I was stuck somehwere between frustration and giddy laughter. “If it were a fast-moving house, I wouldn’t be stuck, would I?”

After a few bad jokes about moving houses, I told SoundGuy I needed to hang up and call the doctor’s office. Despite the extra 30 minutes I’d given myself, there was no way we’d make it on time.

When I reached one of the nurses, I told her we would be late, and asked her how late an arrival would be too late. I think I confused her, because she didn’t answer for the longest time. “Let me explain my situation, ” I said, then proceeded to tell my story.

She laughed at me, too. Then she told the doctor. I could hear him laughing. Then he said something I couldn’t make out. Luckily, the nurse was more than willing to relay the message:

“Tell her to get out of her car, run through the front door of the house, out the back door, and get here on time!”

Ha ha. He’s hilarious.

After I hung up with them (they assured me they’d wait for us), I managed to snap a couple photos with my camera phone.

As it turned out, we were only about 15 minutes late. Despite knowing very little about the area I was in (we won’t mention I have the sense of direction of a half-eaten cantaloupe), I took a chance and hit a side road when the house stopped moving and all the people moving it (including the police escort) were standing in the middle of the street scratching their heads.

15 minutes late and one helluva story to tell.

On Friday, we got another truck. She’s a year older than Sophie was, and with higher mileage, but she’s ours and not some money-draining rental. By going with a used vehicle now, it opens us up to another new truck in a couple years or so, when we’re in a financially better place, and when, presumably, technology will bring us better MPGs on the larger vehicle. If only it wasn’t for the large trailers we have to pull…

It’s a bit jolting for me to look out the door and see a black truck instead of Sophie’s gorgeous cashmere, but I’m sure I’ll get used to it. More importantly, LittleDude, who was having a difficult time, seems to have settled in.

I don’t have any pictures yet (and probably won’t take any until pine pollen season has finally passed), but I wanted to take a minute to publicly welcome our new truck Stella to our family.

We had the accident on Saturday the 15th. Most of the state was under tornado watches and warnings. We were on our way to the other side of Atlanta, and LittleDude had fallen asleep in his seat. SoundGuy was driving, I was reading the paper, and MiniMe was player her Gameboy. I happened to look up in time to see a white van come flying off the onramp and across traffic. SoundGuy says I said something to him about it — I don’t remember that.

After that, the accident in my mind is nothing more than chaotic sounds and images. Another Ford Expedition sideways directly in front of us. Me thinking a few expletives and knowing we were toast. Me screaming. The hood buckling in front of my eyes. A horrible metal scraping sound that went on and on. I remember wondering why we weren’t stopping. And then I remember finally stopping, looking at my husband, and checking on my kids. The rest is a blur, but I remember more of it.

The next day, after going back and forth over the accident and comparing “notes” with SoundGuy and MiniMe (LittleDude slept through the accident), I realized that my body soreness had nothing to do with my seatbelt. Both SoundGuy and MiniMe told me I’d done the one thing you’re never supposed to do in an accident: I’d thrown my arm up to brace against the dashboard.

I honestly don’t remember doing this. Still, I don’t doubt I did it — the left side of my body was killing me and the seat belt was on my right side.

Monday morning we went to the salvage yard to retrieve our belongings from Sophie. I didn’t realize that visit would be as difficult for me as it turned out to be. SoundGuy knew, though, and he was waiting for the flood.

When we got to the salvage yard, I was shaking. We got the rest of our things out and I took nearly 75 pictures. I wanted thorough documentation — can you blame me? The passenger window was still lowered from when I’d opened it after the accident to tell one of the Good Samaritans who’d stopped that we were okay.

That window being down really bothered me. I asked SoundGuy if he’d think I was crazy if I asked him to put the window up. He laughed. Told me yeah, it was crazy. I asked him if he’d do it anyway. Sophie’d kept us safe, I felt like she deserved a little dignity. I didn’t want the rain hurting her interior.

Crazy, I know. But it was important to me. The flood didn’t start at that point, but it was building. Although, in my defense, SoundGuy later agreed with me. Sophie at least deserved that.

The other Ford Expedition had been brought to that salvage yard as well, and this was my first chance to see the damage done to that vehicle. I snuck a couple shots of that truck, too, even though the salvage yard guy told me I wasn’t allowed.

It was when we were about to leave the salvage yard that the flood waters broke loose. We’d turned around for one last look at Sophie, and SoundGuy commented that a door must have been left open because the lights on the side view mirrors were on. I tried to tell him that MiniMe’s door wouldn’t close all the way anymore, but all that came out were sobs and incoherent words.

He understood, and pulled me away. I turned around one last time and whispered a thank you to Sophie for keeping my family safe.

After that, we picked up a rental car. We decided to go ahead and pay out-of-pocket since we needed the vehicle and hadn’t been able to contact insurance yet — since the accident was spread over a large area on the highway, the police didn’t give everybody the insurance information; just told us to pick up the police reports the following week.

Tuesday morning we called the DeKalb County Police and learned the report was ready, so we drove down to pick it up. We saw some minor errors on it, but nothing that really changed the outcome. I was saddened to see the witness information hadn’t been included. There were two witnesses in particular who were very helpful to us, and I would liked to have been able to express my gratitude.

That afternoon, we contacted the guy’s insurance and got our first bad news. While the person who caused the accident had insurance, he only had the state minimums. Considering he totaled my truck, another Ford Expedition, and damaged a BMW, state minimums = not enough insurance.

Next call was to our insurance company, where we discovered that, for some reason, our policy does not include rental car coverage. Then we discovered that the uninsured motorist coverage we thought had been raised wouldn’t actually be raised until our insurance renewed. Next month.

Thankfully, we did have coverage, though. An additional thank God for the fact that we paid for GAP coverage when we financed Sophie.

Lessons learned: When you buy a new vehicle, pay for GAP coverage, make sure you have rental car coverage in your insurance policy, and make sure your uninsured motorist coverage is enough to cover your vehicle if it’s totaled.

Tuesday afternoon the kids went to the doctor, and despite some nasty seat belt burns on MiniMe’s neck, they were both given clean bills of health by their pediatrician. I, on the other hand, am still on anti-inflammatory meds, muscle relaxers, and pain killers. The good news is nothing’s broken, or even cracked. I just sustained some really deep, really nasty bruises.

A few days ago, our insurance company had Sophie moved to a different salvage yard so they could inspect it. She’s officially totaled. SoundGuy and I were able to drive up there Friday morning and get our hitch, which we couldn’t get at the other yard because they’d back her up against another vehicle. SoundGuy was nervous about taking me, and I was nervous about going. But it turned out to be a good thing. We got our hitch, and I felt better about Sophie’s final resting place. This yard is much cleaner. Sophie was put into her slot with some degree of care, and she’s not surrounded by trash. She doesn’t look like she was just carelessly dumped.

I know it’s crazy that I’m humanizing this truck so much. I know that I should be grateful we all came through this relatively unscathed. And I am. I can’t really explain why I’m reacting the way I am, except to say that anybody who knows me, knows how much I loved that truck.

Anyway, the current status is that insurance has sent the check off to the bank. The bank tells me they file the GAP claim once the check is received, and until GAP pays, we’re still responsible for the vehicle payments.

According to the bank’s automated system, the check’s not there yet.

I hope this ends soon — we can’t afford to keep this rental much longer. I won’t even mention what this stress has done to my insides and to my weight.

I disappeared because I’d had some upheavals in my life that had me questioning who I was and what I was doing. After floundering a while, I tried to refocus myself, starting with my home and family.

I’m still focused there, but I wanted to share my horrifying afternoon. Despite today’s nearly statewide tornado watches, MiniMe had a soccer game that hadn’t yet been cancelled, so we were obligated to go. Besides, it was a game she’d been looking forward to.

During the trip southward toward the fields, we had an accident. Not our fault — we couldn’t even have avoided it. But thanks to SoundGuy’s quick thinking and defensive driving skills, our worst injuries were seat belt abrasions and bruising resulting from impact with our seat belts.

My truck, however, is totaled. Not officially yet, but I’m sure that’ll be the result. See for yourself:

God truly was on our side, as evidenced by our lack of injuries. I only wish the same could be said for my truck. I already miss my Sophie. But as one friend has already reminded me, the truck can be replaced.

If anybody’s gone through this and has advice on what we need to do, especially with regard to the insurance company of the person who was cited for the accident, please leave a comment. I’d love to pick your brain.

Sophie back in better days. R.I.P.