Category Archives: Pennsylvania

Scribbles and blueberries

05 Friday Jul 2019

Posted by in Food, Pennsylvania, Randomness

≈ 5 Comments

Blueberries, covering a kitchen island counter.
This morning’s harvest of blueberries.

I arrived at my brother’s house a week ago. Since then, I have picked a great many blueberries. Nowhere close to picking them all, though! We could easily spend three or four times as long and still come nowhere close. The blueberries are prolific this year. Also delicious. Even some of the bushes I haven’t liked in past years — too bland or too small — are good this summer. Maybe it’s because of all the rain? And my favorite bush, which in years past has only had scattered handfuls of berries, has hundreds of them this year. It’s blueberry heaven.

Every time we go pick, though, usually reasonably early in the morning, I both enjoy myself and am incredibly thankful that my life doesn’t actually require me to pick berries for a living. It’s a peaceful, pleasantly monotonous chore for about twenty minutes. And then I start to get hot and sweaty and the mosquitoes begin to attack or I put my knee down on a thistle or my hand into a spiderweb and I’m really grateful that I can stop whenever I want to. We walk away with our full tubs of berries and leave plenty on the bushes for the birds or for the next day’s picking.

Ironically, I woke up this morning with stiff neck and shoulder muscles that had nothing to do with berries. I’ve been spending a lot of time on my computer: working on a marketing plan, a mailing list strategy, some website updates, edits to A Lonely Magic, and words on its sequel. The last has been the least successful of those endeavors, but I spent hours on my laptop yesterday, trying to get back into the swing of it.

Along the way, I updated the Scribbles page with a couple of my favorite fanfiction stories, some unfinished stories that I like, and a scene that I cut from A Gift of Time long ago. It felt like a very productive day at the time, but this morning it felt like I’d been doing heavy labor. But having real internet feels like such a luxury — I want to take advantage of it while I can. One of the unfinished stories is so tempting, too — it’s always the way of the words: the story I’m writing feels like work, the story I’m not writing feels like temptation. (I was going to tell you which one, but I will wait and see if anyone wants to guess first. 🙂 )

And speaking of temptation, I think it’s time for lunch. Breakfast this morning was yogurt, blueberries, and granola. I think lunch is going to be a spinach salad with goat cheese, blueberries, and pumpkin seeds. Dinner will probably include some blueberries, too, in one form or another. Yay for summertime!

More reading than writing

22 Monday Oct 2018

Posted by in Books, Pennsylvania, Randomness, RV, Writing

≈ 7 Comments

I told my brother this morning that today should be the day I start south. And then, thoughtfully, that yesterday probably should have been. It is cold in Pennsylvania right now and I am so underprepared for cold weather. The van is quite cozy — its heater works beautifully — but bundling up in a multitude of layers every time I step outside is a PITA.

This is why people own winter coats.

I, however, do not own a winter coat and while I could buy one, of course, I haven’t wanted a mostly useless object cluttering up the van. I’m probably going to have to reconsider that position in the next few months, though. I’m not sure yet what this winter is going to bring — possibly a lot more driving hours than I will actually appreciate — but a winter coat might become a necessity.

Anyway, despite the cold, I’m not heading south yet. My niece is in her school play, opening night this Thursday, and I’m going to stick around long enough to see her perform. I’d be tempted to stick around for Halloween, too — she’s going to be some sort of skeleton pirate, and the preliminary make-up experiments have been impressively horrifying while also cute as anything — but it’s too cold and I have too much to do in Florida.

Also, I’ve gone over three weeks without dumping the tanks, and that’s too long. I’ll be staying inside the house for the next couple of days, partially because of the cold but mostly because I’ve hit the point where I really, truly, positively can’t use the toilet again until I dump the black tank, so it is definitely time to find myself a campground. I told my dad yesterday that the details of my future home fantasies were narrowing down to “running water.” Sure, a room with a view, nearby yoga, affordable cost-of-living, those are all nice. But running water is glorious.

Also, yesterday, I ordered a 50-pod pack of black-tank sanitizer pods from Amazon. Given that I can and often do go about two weeks without dumping the tanks, and I still have four or five pods left from the pack I’ve been using, that means I’ve got about two years worth of black-tank sanitizing ahead of me. My shopping subconscious possibly knows more about my future home plans than my conscious mind is willing to admit to.

Writing has been going horribly badly of late. I hate every word I write. Some of that is author love. I read The Spymaster’s Lady by Joanna Bourne a couple of weeks ago. Someone online said that it was their favorite book of all time, their comfort read, so I checked it out from the library. It sat on my Libby bookshelf for over two weeks, because I don’t read much historical romance and I was dubious at best. Finally, when I had only a couple of days left, I started to read. A few chapters in, I was hating it, almost on the verge of giving up, when suddenly, there was a twist. A really good, really fun, totally implausible but super cool twist. I gobbled down the rest of the book, reached the end, started over again while trying to read more slowly, reached the end, and started over again! Not often that I read a book three times in a row.

I actually still wasn’t sure how I felt about it. It definitely wouldn’t make it onto my favorite book ever list or even anywhere close, largely because the sex is… well, pre-#metoo, if that’s sufficient explanation. But the writing was still fantastic, even if the romance was a prime example of questionable consent issues. But I promptly put all the rest of her books on hold at the library. Fortunately, or perhaps unfortunately, while I was waiting, Amazon sent me a gift card, and I didn’t hesitate. (Incidentally, The Spymaster’s Lady is $2.99 on Kindle at the moment, so if you do like historical romance, it’s a deal.) So over the course of the past ten days or so, I’ve read all of Joanna Bourne’s books.

For a little while, they sunk me into the depths of despair. She’s an incredible writer — her plots are completely fun, with levels of implausibility that you just don’t care about at all. Seriously, lost heiresses, spy schools, amnesia, they’ve got it all. But she sets them in worlds with so many vivid, concrete, sensory details that they feel real. Then she adds smart characters who actually behave like smart people (most of them anyway); language and metaphors that fit the point of view; and a sense of wry humor. They made me want to give up on being a writer entirely.

Then, fortunately, I think, I read her very first book, which was not available at my library but was available at Amazon. The most important thing to know about that book is that it was originally published in 1983. The second most important to know about it is that you really, really, really don’t want to read it as an example of her writing. Probably, you really don’t want to read it at all. I’m actually a little surprised that she let it be re-issued. But it comforted me. I will not give up on being a writer quite yet.

And that does mean I should get back to it. At about 5:30 this morning, I had an idea about where I’d gone wrong with Fen, and why I was so stuck. I knew, knew, knew that I should get up and open my computer and write it down, but it was so cozy in my nest of blankets. I promised myself I’d remember it. Ha. But maybe when I stare at the file for a while, it will come back to me.

Off I go to stare.

Best of June 2018

02 Monday Jul 2018

Posted by in Best of, Pennsylvania, Randomness, Travel

≈ 5 Comments

June included three driveways, one independent campground (a KOA), and four state parks, three of them in Ohio, one in Michigan. Three states, too — Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Michigan.

Lots of family time, including three different birthday celebrations. Some of it with family where the relationships require multiple hyphens and lots of apostrophes. (I.e, my sister-in-law’s sister’s husband baked some nice gluten-free bread for one celebration; my stepmother’s stepdaughter’s son was a fun conversationalist at another; I very much enjoyed meeting my stepsister’s daughter-in law; and so on.)

But plenty of quieter family time, too: walks with my niece and my aunt; video games with my nephew; gluten-free, healthy lunches with my brother; baking conversations with my SIL.

My favorite campground was definitely Maumee Bay — a beautiful place. But my favorite place to be was definitely my brother’s garden house. I went to sleep Saturday night admiring the sparkle of fireflies against the silhouetted trees, and woke up grateful to be here.

blueberries

And yes, the blueberries are ripe and delicious!

Not quite ripe

13 Wednesday Jun 2018

Posted by in Grace, Pennsylvania, Personal

≈ 3 Comments

unripe blueberries

In 2017, June 13th was the first day of picking blueberries and by June 19th, they were getting ripe faster than we could eat them. Much, much faster!

Alas, this winter was colder so the blueberries are slower. I’m counting the days and watching the calendar — I’m going to be seriously dismayed if I miss them entirely. Not so much so that I would change my plans: I’ve got campground reservations already paid for until after the 4th of July, so I’m going to be doing the things I’m planning on doing. But I do love blueberries right off the bush, warm from the sun, and specifically, from the fifth bush in the first row in my brother’s blueberry patch. I will be sad if I miss them this year.

Meanwhile, though, I’m having a lovely time with my niece and nephew.

My nephew’s playing PS4 games with me: we’re spending a lot of time in a game called Monster Hunter, which has both a story and much wandering around an interesting environment. I’m never going to be good at PS4 controls — the days of building that kind of fine-tuned muscle memory are probably long gone for me — but I’ve been having fun anyway, and he’s very tolerant of my incompetence.

My niece is walking the dogs with me and talking about books, friends, stories, words. On our most recent walk, we searched for synonyms for “walk.” I started us off with “stroll” and “saunter” and “mosey” — her dog likes to mosey while Zelda strides. My favorite was one of hers, “amble.” So we ambled along, building memories.

And when they’re at school, I’ve been writing. I suspect my first draft of the ending — the only part of the book that is going to be a true first draft, given how many revisions the first 2/3rd of the book have gone through — is going to be seriously underwritten. Every time I open my file and read my previous day’s words, I shake my head and spend the first hour of my writing time adding some context and setting, tweaking my descriptions and re-organizing chaotic dialogue.

But I really am in the ending and it really is pretty close. The scene I’m currently writing is turning out much longer than I expected it to be — despite or maybe because of the underwriting. But after this… two more scenes? Given that I’m not going anywhere for a week, if you don’t hear from me for a few days, it’s because I’m writing Grace and picking blueberries, with nothing much to blog about besides those two things.