Stubborn Leaves
by Lynn Daniels on Wednesday, December 3, 2008 at 2:00 pm
Today is a special day in my household; it’s my SoundGuy’s birthday. He’s– well, let’s just say he’s a lot older than me. Centuries. Eons. No big plans, though. I’ll pick up a cake at the grocery store and I picked up a gift for him. His birthday is tough with gifts, as so much of our money is going toward Christmas.
Kind of like how my birthday is tough because it’s right before Valentine’s Day. I think he got the shorter end of the stick, though.
I’m taking a few days off of writing to do some crafts. LittleDude’s teacher has a baby due soon, and I’ve got to get her gift finished so LittleDude can take it to school with him on Friday, her last day before maternity leave. I’m also trying to make a bunch of ornaments for the upstairs Christmas tree. This will be our first year with an upstairs Christmas tree, and I thought it’d be cool to have one with all homemade ornaments. I don’t know if I’ll get enough made before Christmas, though, so that upstairs tree might be pretty naked.
Maybe we’ll just dub it Naked Tree.
Oh, and it’s December! Do you know what that means? It’s time to check in with Huey, Dewey, & Louie in my front yard. If you need a refresher on last month’s look (for comparison purposes, of course), you can find that post here.
Now, for December’s pictures. What a difference a month makes! I just went out and took these about an hour ago, so they’re extremely up to date.
Here’s the first picture. As you can see, the leaves have most definitely changed color. You may also notice that many of them are still clinging to the tree. The bane of SoundGuy’s winters.
Picture #2. SoundGuy actually foiled my plans this year. The leaves you see strewn across the yard are those that have fallen after SoundGuy’s gone out twice during the last month and cleaned them up! While many of the leaves are from our trees, we’ve also got a forest across the street that deposits beaucoup leaves in our yard.
And finally:
I realized that I had managed to decapitate the trees in the first two photos. That’s what I get for being a smart ass and running outside in my t-shirt (it’ll only take me a couple seconds!) to get the shots. In 46 degree weather. I’m lucky I was able to hold the camera steady. Seriously. So anyway, here’s Huey with most of his head intact to show how many leaves he’s still holding on to.
And now I leave you. I’ve got to get crackin’ on that baby blanket! Have a great day!
Dinosaur Respect
by Lynn Daniels on Thursday, November 6, 2008 at 8:20 am
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NaNoWriMO Day Six
I knew writing during the kids TKD lessons would help. Just look at that word count! And they’ve got TKD again today.
I’m so looking forward to it. One problem I’m having, though. Rube was supposed to be a pompous dinosaur. He was supposed to have a major superiority complex and really look down on my little Chester the duck with the smart blue felt fedora.He hasn’t come out that way.
I don’t know why, but I’m just having a hard time writing a character who’s mean to Chester for no reason. I’m sure that won’t be an issue once I reach the portion where he interacts with the evil Centipig, but the evil Centipig will be just that. Evil. Rube is to be Chester’s friend. He was a little standoffish at first, and he kind of thought Chester was a little–well–stupid, but he couldn’t be mean because of Chester’s childlike innocence and sweetness. And he actually ended up with an inferiority complex instead. He didn’t like to make friends with forest creatures because they all took advantage of his size. They used him to bully those who upset him, and Chester has refused to do that.
Chester the duck with the smart blue felt fedora earned the respect of Rube the dinosaur much sooner than I’d anticipated.
I keep thinking that one of these days I’ll post an excerpt. And I still might. But what stops me is the fact that there’s been so much free writing with the story, and it’s probably not very good writing. And although I called it fantasy, it’s more like a children’s story for adult-aged children. Does that make sense?
And now, as promised, our first front yard photos.
Here’s my front yard. You can see a little piece of my driveway in the foreground and that’s my street on the right side of the photo. I’ve very helpfully labled our three trees: Huey, Dewey & Louie. Of course, SoundGuy simply refers to them as dadgumm trees, although he often substitutes a strong word for dadgumm. I took this photo on Halloween day; the leaves color hasn’t even started to change yet. Four days later, it was a different story. But we’re not talking about four days later, we’re talking about October 31st.
Here’s the yard again from a slightly different angle. The tree right there in the foreground is Huey, with Dewey behind him and to the right. It’s a bit harder to make out Louie in this shot, but if you look close, you can see his trunk. He’s kind of hard to see because our side yard behind him is all woods.
So there you have it. Our first month check-in with Huey, Dewey and Louie. My initial plan was to have the next photos the first week of December, but now I’m starting to wonder if there shouldn’t be a supplemental episode in mid-November.
Have a great day — I’ll be spending a little time pondering this one.
The Saga of Huey, Dewey & Louie
by Lynn Daniels on Wednesday, November 5, 2008 at 7:20 am
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NaNoWriMo Day Five
Yesterday was the big shopping trip. Converse for LittleDude. Of course, all the places that had good prices were out of his size. Some had every size but his. How does that happen?I did finally manage to find him a pair. When we looked in on him last night, they were in the bed next to him, resting comfortably on his pillow and tucked snugly under the covers.
My front yard has three trees. Every year– Maybe I shouldn’t put it that way, since we’ve only been in this house a couple years. Rephrasing that to: The past couple years SoundGuy has insisted on waiting until they’ve dropped all their leaves before going out to pick them up. Unfortunately, while every other tree in the neighborhood drops its leaves early, those three trees insist on clinging to theirs until sometime in March. This frustrates SoundGuy to no end.They don’t hold on to all their leaves, they drop just enough to make our yard look like it needs a good raking. They hold on to enough to make you certain that the moment you clear the yard of leaves, those trees will fill it right back up again. And they usually do. This year, I’ve decided to have a little fun with it.
Sometime during the first week of every month, I’m going to take a picture of my front yard and the leaves. I thought it might be a kick to see how those trees (to be known henceforth as Huey, Dewey, & Louie) and my yard progress throughout the season. Especially since SoundGuy has sworn that this year he won’t wait to clear the leaves. We’ll see. And we’ll have pictorial evidence.
I’m still making progress with Chester and Rube, and I’m still having a lot of fun. Unfortunately, yesterday’s shopping trip precluded the TKD lessons, which means I didn’t get my alone writing time. Both kids, however, will absolutely go to TKD today. Word count boost, here I come!I’ve learned that since I’m not worried about my NaNoWriMo project being published, I’m not above a little word padding. Word padding is fun! In my story, Chester is most frequently referred to as Chester the duck with the smart blue felt fedora, and his new found friend Rube (yes, I did get that scene written yesterday!), until his name was revealed, was referred to as the giant purple not sporgled bloonk.
Trust me, it makes sense in context.
Today’s scenes will have to chronicle the growing relationship between Chester and Rube before they’re thrown into the fire and forced to save Feckerson Forest from the evil Centipig and his army of pigipede minions. We’ll also begin taming Rube and maturing Chester (the duck with the smart blue felt fedora), who’s still often distracted by shiny objects. And ants. And butterflies. And mud puddles…
Random Photo
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NaNoWriMo
