not without a fight

Today is the first full day of Spring, and I'd be doing my Snoopy dance at this very moment if I hadn't looked out my window this morning and seen this:

I think Winter has decided it's worth dying on this hill. I know, I know. I need to lighten up, or, Erleichda, as Tom Robbins might advise. And I can always remind myself that at least it's not as cold as it was one morning in the heart of winter, when I woke up before dawn to drive down the road and visit my favorite tree.

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pre-spring free verse-y blog post

Wake up to a quiet house, temporarily kidless, and itching to clean and organize - not unlike pregnancy nesting, but a spring thing this time. Start in the kitchen, then add other rooms until there's a harmony and a rhythm working. But what am I doing, I think. It's gorgeous outside! And so Lizzie the Cowdog and I take the show out there where the horses watch, needing their own spring cleaning (shelter mucked, winter coats stripped, water tank scoured, and on and on). The Pink Trailer calls, and so I answer. Throw open the door and behold an eternity's worth of stuff needing to be dealt with, some of it hard - the rocking pony from daughter's toddler years, boxes of old divorce documents and lots of stuff probably best Goodwilled, but I have a hard time letting go sometimes. (The rocking horse stays. Period.) Hours pass, and they looked like this: me hauling the Rubbermaided (Rubbermaidened?) evidence of years already lived from the trailer to the woodshed; me going through the drawers and cupboards and closet of the trailer, seeing what's there (old coffee perkpot, old laundry clips, old flatware, all of it charming) and dreaming of camping trips at nearby lakes this summer, checking out the tires, eyeballing the ancient suspension, more formless pondering. Scrub the trailer's innards then stand back, pleased. Trees need attention next (from whence this energy?) - the liquidambar and the quaking aspen planted last fall, plus the live spruce from Christmas, still babies all. Settle the spruce into its new hole (chicken wire-lined against our looky-loo prairie dog neighbors). The hose is dragged out next so all can get a deep, late-winter watering, even though it doesn't feel like winter anymore the way I'm sweating. Aiming the hose at new roots I look up startled by sound of an eagle's cry overhead. Turns out there are two of them - adult bald eagles - swooping and swirling in the sky above my house, either courting or battling in a falling spiral, but whatever it is it's extraordinary, an extraordinary gift. Even Lizzie the Cowdog stares up at them, head cocked, ears up. We're frozen at the sight, and as I stand there with sweat on my back and my hands covered in water and dirt I realize that a) we're done for the day, and b) we're just getting started.Follow @nicole_mcinnes

for girls only

So, a girlfriend and I were talking about That Time of the Month Which Shall Remain Nameless (TTOTMWSRN) and how we know every month, without fail, when it's approaching.

Is it when we offer to remove the grocery store bagger's face for putting the bananas in the same bag as the paper towels?

Is it when the sight of an empty email inbox makes us go back to bed and weep for an hour straight?

Or do we know TTOTMWSRN is imminent when we find ourselves (note how I deftly hide my identity by using the collective "we") standing in front of the microwave with a wooden spoon full of brownie batter in one hand while waiting for our salty, salty microwave popcorn to finish popping?

Men, I tried to warn you.Follow @nicole_mcinnes

absolution

It's what Get Low is about.

And, can I just say, movies like this - stories like this - are the reason I keep writing. They're the reason I still try.

Of course, it never hurts when Robert Duvall is the leading man.Follow @nicole_mcinnes

mixed blessings

The man brought home a big bag of takeout food from Flagstaff’s yummy Pato Thai last night, and that's what I had for breakfast. Seriously, the Tom Ka coconut milk soup is something of a wonder, though I was skeptical the first time I had it.

In other news:

My son’s dog was attacked by two big bully dogs while we were out for a run the other day. Bums me out that the owners a) didn’t even bother to walk three doors down to see how she was doing afterward, and b) don’t bother to address the problem and properly restrain their dogs even after several other incidents involving said dogs in the neighborhood. People suck sometimes. Lizzie’s okay, by the way.

A neighbor came by this weekend with a carton of 18 nummy eggs from her fat hens. Traded 'em for soap. There’s nothing like the taste of farm-fresh eggs, and I’ll use these for everything from breakfast to dessert.

Oh, and even though the pow pow’s extremely cool for skiing and snowboarding, I am officially tired of being cold. So, here’s a special note to Winter: I’m breaking up with you. Everything you own in the box to the left.

And it’s not me – it’s you.

:-p   pttthhhhhtFollow @nicole_mcinnes

Angel Heart Farm

While down at the Scottsdale show, I enjoyed perusing the creations of and buying a few prints from Arabian artist extraordinaire, Shary Akers. We chatted for a bit about her art, our horses and being a vendor at shows (which is something I'm familiar with from years of selling handmade soaps). Our chat turned to artistic inspiration, and, in particular, artistic kids. I told her about my son, who can regularly be found mid-sketch, and Shary graciously autographed a print of "The Black" for my kids.

As we chatted, I noticed a little sign she had by the cash register asking for donations (no amount too small) for something called Angel Heart Farm. I asked her about it, and she told me about a woman she knows in Kentucky who devotes her life to bringing terminally ill children and horses together. If you have nothing better to do for the next five minutes, do yourself and your soul a huge favor and check out the short video on Angel Heart's homepage. I dare you to remain unmoved.

:-)Follow @nicole_mcinnes

scottsdale all-arabian horse show 2011

February usually equals cold, wind and snow here at 7,000 feet, which generally makes it a blissful time to head down to the Valley of the Sun for a little sunny R&R. I've been doing it off and on since the early 90's when I moved to Arizona, but I have to say, this was one of the coldest weekends I've ever spent down there. Still, the reasons to get out of Dodge were numerous, so down we went.

First timers to Westworld, where the show is held every year, can't help but catch their breath a little when they come upon the bronze Arabians at the entrance:

Once inside the entrance tent, you're greeted by wall to wall booths full of amazing art and saddles and bling, and it's almost too much to take in:

Due to the rain and the wind this year, the covered warm-up arena was packed. Halter classes were actually being held in the outdoor warm-up, which makes me think Wendell Arena must have been a mess:

Inside the Equidome, though, it was business as usual. I never got an official entry count, but classes were decent sized, and there were lots of spectators there for the long weekend:

The mare halter classes on Saturday night were awesome. For me, it was all about the greys this year. So many breathtaking beauties:

Before heading back up to the snow and our own fuzzy four-leggeds, we got to see one of the benefits of all that rain:

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item #23 checked off the bucket list

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people stew

It often happens like this: I'm finishing up a manuscript, getting ready to send it out into the big world with it's still-moist wings and focusing on keeping myself hopeful. Meanwhile, there's a crockpot full of other ideas...things strangers are saying, thoughts and memories these strangers are having...simmering in another part of my brain, distracting me a little from the task at hand. But I don't want to unplug the crockpot. I don't want to throw out its contents. Instead, I press the lid down - gently but firmly - hoping nothing escapes for just a little while longer.

I finish releasing the new bird, my most recent baby, and then I turn to back the crockpot, which is by now threatening to boil over. Carefully, carefully I lift the lid and peer inside, giving a little bit more attention to what's being said and who's saying it - what's being thought and who's thinking it. Getting to know the strangers inside.

Sounds a little grotesque, I know. Like, what is she talking about? People in a crockpot? Ew. Such a rash, blatant mixing of metaphors! Birds, horses, boiling people? Gimme a break!

And yet, I don't know how to explain the process of letting go of one book and starting another any better than that. Not yet anyway

Today's note to self:
Be ridiculously optimistic.
And stand up straight.Follow @nicole_mcinnes

grand

Mic Macs - about a boy who loses his father to a landmine and then grows into a man who's accidentally shot in the head before being adopted by a family of junkyard genius misfits who help him exact revenge - is a cinematic wonder.

Every other frame of the opening sequence is a painting I'd gladly hang on the wall. Plus, the film made me giggle. And I'm all for anything that can do that.

See it.Follow @nicole_mcinnes

on the up side

...there's this.

And it'll be here soon, very soon.

I can't wait.Follow @nicole_mcinnes

down side

At some point during the night last night a neighbor’s yearling filly was mauled by a mountain lion.

At least, we think it was a mountain lion. Walking over there this morning I checked out the tracks, and though I don’t have the most trained eye, it seems pretty clear that’s what they are – big pads, no nail marks, prints disappearing into the forest next to my house. The filly’s going to be put down, and the thought made part of me not even want to go over there to see if the owners needed anything from a fellow horse person. Too many long-buried memories there, memories I didn’t want dredged up. But that’s what you do in our community (in any decent community, I guess). You stop by, and you acknowledge. You ask if there’s anything you can do. I was pretty sure they’d say no (they did), because I’ve been in a very similar situation with a doomed horse, and, really, what the hell can anyone do?

This is the worst – the absolute worst – part of living in the country.

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crepe geek

I've long been under the sort of vague impression that crepes were one of those difficult, diva-like foods that required the proper training - or at least the proper French pedigree to prepare. But it's not true! I was finally convinced of this by The Cook's Book, which I picked up for a song at my most favoritest bookstore of all time (which finally re-opened in December after its roof collapsed under last winter's snow). So, voila! My first batch of practice crepes:

Fetching, aren't they (if I do say so myself)? From there, it was but a short hop, skip and jump to smoked turkey with white cheddar and sage lunch nommables:

And, finally, the pièce de résistance of the afternoon, blueberry crepes!

Truly, these I could eat ALL day. See my previous post re: hiberneating, and you'll understand.

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three things

1) Word of the Day:

Hiberneat verb \ˈhī-bər-ˌneet\
intransitive verb
1: to pass the winter in a torpid state of non-stop nomming

2: to be or become inactive or dormant while simultaneously growing rounder



2) Quote of the Day (uttered while man is hiberneating with a candy cane from Christmas, sharpening the end of the cane to a sharp point and then holding it up proudly for his beloved to see):

"Look, Honey. It's a shiv!" Pauses. "Wait. Or is it a shank?"


3) Blog Reader Activity of the Day:

Finish the following sentence:
One thing I know for sure is...Follow @nicole_mcinnes

January 11, 1986

is the day this boy

was born - which makes him a quarter of a century old today!

Happy 25th, my Once-in-a-Lifetime!Follow @nicole_mcinnes

Julia is not to be trifled with

My mother gave me Mastering the Art of French Cooking as a Christmas gift, and it’s something I plan to treasure and use for years to come before passing it along to my own daughter. I was hoping to end up with Mom’s own, decades-old copy, but it seems to have disappeared somewhere between my childhood and now. I made it a point to make Julia’s famous onion soup first, since it was a staple in our home as I was growing up. And I quickly learned that when Julia admonishes the reader to do something (i.e. watch the onions carefully in the caramelizing stage), she’s not doing so for her own benefit: A mere few minutes distraction and I had eye-watering charcoal in the pan instead of uniformly browned onions as the recipe called for. Not to be put off by this initial mishap (mainly because I’m well aware there will be hundreds more like it in my future as I work my way through Mastering the Art), I tried again. Keeping my focus this time and following Julia’s directions to the letter, I ended up with a dish that not only brought me right back to cozy winter nights with family while the northern California rain beat down on the roof, but that even had my finicky tween son asking for seconds.

Moving on, it was time to tackle Poulet Poele a L’Estragon (many accent marks missing), which is basically Casserole-roasted Chicken with Tarragon. Here it was necessary for me to deviate from Julia’s directions slightly (even though I’d assured myself I’d never do that again after the charcoal onion mishap), mainly because I didn’t have the mattress needle and white string necessary for trussing a chicken. So, I sort of just let my chicken hang loose throughout the process – more of hippy chick(en) than an uptight, French bird. And the fact that I kept thinking things like “Poor little chicken” to myself while preparing the dish is just one of the reasons I would have made a terrible farm kid. Regardless, I was obliged to put the thing through all sorts of humiliations (beheading and plucking aside) in order to end up with yet one more mouth-watering (if I do say so myself) and popular dish:

I'm pretty sure Julia's chickens behaved in a much more professional manner.

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lost and found

Having not, as I mentioned in a recent post, read Lorrie Moore for many years, I find myself snowed in and feasting on her latest, A Gate at the Stairs. While it took me a while to really get into it (as will happen when one tries to start a book at Christmas time, I suppose), I'm already racking up a list of favorite lines. Among them:

"The January day was blue, sun sparkling off the evergreens, the air clear as a bell; it was state-of-the-art light, as noon in January sometimes could be: not rich but pale and cleansing as lemon wine." (p.78)

Later, in coming spring, a "hot lemony sun" makes an appearance - and there's a lot of classic, but somehow also more knowing Moore throughout, as if she's been there, done that and is still alive to tell the story. By the end of the novel? Well, frankly, I was getting too weepy to pick and choose favorite lines.

Frankly, it's like the return of an old friend who dropped off the map and was more or less given up for lost.Follow @nicole_mcinnes

gone egg noggin'

I'll be out and about, perusing the wide, mad world for the next...oh, ten days or so. I hope you all have a wonderful rest of the holiday season, and I'll catch you on the flip side of 2010. In the meantime, there's this:

"But the real life of a writer resides in showing up at the keyboard every day, with the necessary patience and mercy, and making the best decisions you can on behalf of your people. It’s a slow process. It often feels hopeless, more like an affliction than an art form.


Most of us will have to find our readers one by one, in other words, and against considerable resistance. If anything qualifies us as heroic, it’s that private perpetual struggle.

Put down the magazine, soldier. Forget about the other guy. Remember who you are."

~Steve Almond, The RumpusFollow @nicole_mcinnes

empty chairs, empty patches of sunlight

At this time of year it's so easy to think, talk and post about the food and the shopping and the get-togethers and the decorating - all of it seemingly required for the holidays to go smoothly. People are trying to stick to a budget, to manage their December calendars, to watch the calories and strategize travel plans all the while stressing out over the economy. It can get crazy and distracting, and it can wind us up for the big, post-holiday crash. Beyond that, it can make us forget about the pain some people are bearing at this "most wonderful time of the year."

I know, I know. I usually try to keep the blog light and optimistic. And I really do love Christmas - really, I do. So, don't think I'm trying to bring the blogosphere down or anything. But I have dear friends and family who have lost loved ones in just the past couple of days, and my heart is heavy for them. This goes both ways, since their hearts have been heavy on my behalf when I've endured my own losses as well.

And as much as we don't want it to be so, as much as we want the season to be pure Happy-Happy-Joy-Joy (that's a Ren & Stimpy reference for those of you who didn't know), that's not always the case, and Grief can be a most unwelcome holiday house guest for adults and kids alike. For some, Grief is an empty chair at the table. For others it's an empty patch of sunlight on the floor, the favorite spot of a furry friend now gone.

So, this is a reminder to myself as much as it is to anyone else: Give an extra hug when you have the chance. Lend your ear for an extra minute to listen. And, most of all, celebrate the people and the pets and the moments that bring you joy. We're all in this together.Follow @nicole_mcinnes

book crush

Ever had one of these? Or maybe multiples? I heard somebody refer to Lorrie Moore last week, and it brought me right back to graduate school, when I read everything I could by her. My well-worn copy of Like Life still sits on my bookshelf, and I sometimes think of how one narrator described herself waiting for her lover as arranged on the bed like some ridiculous cake.

Anne Lamott’s books were major crushes for me, too. I’ve been reading her books since Rosie, Hard Laughter and All New People were new. And since I’m from Marin, it’s not at all unusual to see her around town when I’m visiting. When she came to the Northern Arizona Book Festival back in the ‘90s, I thoroughly embarrassed myself by giving her a big hug during the author meet-and-greet. I’m sure she thought I was a stalker or something.

I don’t have any current book crushes, but the history goes way back. What are some books you’ve crushed on, either recently or in the distant past?Follow @nicole_mcinnes

somebody told me that her name was jill

So, last winter was crazy here in Northern Arizona. On top of being all but snowed in for what seemed like forever, the roof of our local ice rink collapsed. Then, my favorite book store of all time - the place where REM's Michael Stipe walked up and started talking to me  - met with a similar fate.

This year, with the official start of winter just days away, locals are walking around in t-shirts, hanging laundry out on the line and doing Christmas shopping in flip-flops. It’s crazy again! But in a different way!

Yesterday, while feeding the horses, I heard a chirping and trilling overhead. When I looked up, I saw a decisively spring-looking songbird hanging out on a telephone wire. Get thee to Phoenix before the snow comes, Little Buddy! I found myself thinking. There’s even green grass on my property still, and bumblebees flitting around now and then. Seems nature herself is as befuddled as the rest of us.

I do love t-shirt weather in December, though it’s sad to see how thoroughly it has harshed the collective mellow of local skiers and snowboarders.

Oh! And speaking of t-shirts…I don’t know if I’ve just been watching too much Glee, or what, but I have songs in my heart lately. A lot of them are, um, interesting songs, too, like this Paul Anka classic sung by Finn. And it’s 70’s songs like these that get me in the mood to share one of my most treasured possessions with all of you. Now, I don’t want to, you know, brag or anything. I know the economy has been rough for a long time now, and not everyone can have something so...special.

But here it is anyway:

I have just four words for you: Da. Doo. Ron. Ron.Follow @nicole_mcinnes

NaNo FAIL

Just call me NaNoWreckMo Nicki. The woman whose NaNoWriMo dreams imploded at 31,000 feet words. It happened a little over a week before the end of NaNoWriMo. I just…stopped. And for some reason it’s totally okay. Normally I’d be awash in chagrin by now, pointing my finger at myself for not having finished something I set out to do. But, you know, life’s short. And it’s the holidays, and frankly, I decided I’d much rather spend time with friends and family and get my paying obligations met rather than chain myself to the keyboard to ensure my word count for the day was met. So, I let it go.


The good news? I got some solid material for the next project generated with those 30k words, material that now sits in the hopper fermenting until it’s ready to take on new life as a potential draft. I’ve had the “NaNoWriMo Winner!” badge on my blog before, a few years back. I have to say, I wish they’d come out with a “NaNoWriMo FAIL!” badge, as I would no doubt display it proudly. Or maybe it’s like the equestrian endurance racing folks say: To finish is to win. Maybe I’m a winner after all…but nah. Twenty thousand unwritten words tell a different story. Oh well!

In other news, I’m going to be redundant and link to a blog post Nathan Bransford has already linked to on his phenomenal blog. Kudos to Ms. Whipple for going where most authors don’t dare to go.

Happy Friday, Everyone!Follow @nicole_mcinnes

little cat feet

A friend loaned me the Hilary Swank/Richard Gere movie Amelia the other day, and it was really good. I particularly liked the scene where Amelia Earhart is looking out through the window of her little plane and thinking in voiceover:


“The fog comes/on little cat feet…” she muses.

Then, the next day, I was looking over a book of poems my boy checked out from the school library. It’s an oldy, this book, and my first thought was that it would be a perfect submission for Awful Library Books.

 Then I opened the cover and completely cracked up.

Discarded Because of Obsolescence. Ouch. There’s one of the top ten worst fears of most people, am I right? I’m not sure why it made me laugh like it did. Clearly, The First Book of Poetry is on its second life at our little rural school.

Anyway, in thumbing through I realized it wasn’t bad at all. Robert Frost is in there (…and miles to go before I sleep…) as are A.A. Milne and Emily Dickinson (Wild Nights is one of my favorite poems ever). And then, there on page 72, was this:

The fog comes

on little cat feet.



It sits looking

over harbor and city

on silent haunches

and then moves on.

~Carl Sandburg

 
Weird coincidence. But, there you have it: I guess you really can't judge a book by its cover.Follow @nicole_mcinnes

pop musings

I have to say, I was held fairly in thrall by the latest Rolling Stone interview with Eminem. Here's a guy who found a lot of fame by ticking off/shocking a bunch of people, and he's also obviously faced down his share of demons over the years. I have to say, it's refreshing to have something like respect for an entertainer who used to repel me on every level.

Also, call me hopelessly behind the times, but I heard Katy Perry's Firework for the first time today, and ...Wow! What an awesome message (though I have to say "igniting the light" looks pretty painful).

Just, you know, catching up with pop culture a little bit.Follow @nicole_mcinnes

writing and running

Seems a lot of writers are also runners, and as I work the theme of running into a new story I’m working on, I can see why. The physical act of writing is fairly static: You sit in a chair, you stretch once in a while, but mostly it’s your fingers moving. Running is a chance for those of us who otherwise sit a lot to get out and get moving. It’s a way to connect with motion and forward momentum. I’ve found this can be really, really useful when a project is getting bogged down and losing that page-turner quality.

Running – especially outdoor running…especially trail running – is anything but static. When you’re out off-roading it, your entire being needs to be alert and aware. It’s good practice for writerly types who, if given the choice, would spend most of their time with their heads in the clouds. I remember when I used to go for runs across the remote prairie where I lived I always had at least one ear and one eye on the alert for mountain lions because a canyon they supposedly liked to frequent was just a couple miles away as the crow flies. It was great motivation to keep moving at a good clip, let me tell you (and I was never quite sure what I’d do if I actually ran into a mountain lion, but just being aware of the possibility seemed somehow like a good idea).

These days I run mostly on a frontage road near the interstate, but I usually take Lizzy the Cow Dog with me on her telescoping leash. That means I have to keep my eye out for cars, since she has very little sense that way and will basically run right out into the road, completely oblivious. So, my eyes are on the dog and the road ahead, my ears are kept busy with iPod tunes, and my legs are doing their thing, reminding me that forward momentum is what keeps the world – and the story – alive and interesting.Follow @nicole_mcinnes

a warm song

...for a cold day. Brrrr! It feels like the icy November wind is finally blowing winter into the Northland. It was t-shirt weather all weekend, and I'm NOT ready for the freeze!

That's okay. Paramore can warm us all up.Follow @nicole_mcinnes

being enough

Here’s a pretty awesome article for those of us who have a history of being – how can I put this delicately? - RABIDLY TYPE A about some of these issues.

Seems especially fitting for a day like today, when channelling Jimmy Buffett sounds like not such a bad idea.

So, what are your "what ifs" and "whens?"

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wri-ing the mo away

So, National Novel Writing Month. Yeah, that thing.

It's actually going pretty well, which is surprising. I'm up to just over 16K words as of last night, which is just a couple hundred words shy of where I 'd ideally like to be. Normally, by this point in the process (well into week two), the initial exuberance has worn off a bit and things have started to plateau. Also, a few weeks in I generally start finding it really tough at times to meet that daily word count.

Not so much this time around, though. It probably helps that I jumped into the writing with some fairly strong ideas and story leads I wanted to follow. Having just finished getting a YA novel ready for submission, I figured my muse would be pretty much spent, and I'd end up writing 50,000 words of drivel. And while some of what I've knocked out definitely has been drivel, I'm finding some pretty nice passages when I look back through the past ten days of content.

If you're doing NaNo this year, too, how's it going?Follow @nicole_mcinnes

thanks, popular kids

Seems my whining about being all alone and dweeked out on the Facebook Interwebs worked, and I'd like to thank those who came to my rescue by either accepting my friend requests or friending me of their own volition. Bear with me in this digression, but it reminds me of the boost of confidence I was supposed to get when I was thirteen, and a kindly neighbor lady stopped by to chat with my mother. I was wearing braces to fix the diastema (which I hear is all the rage among the supermodel set nowadays) and coke bottle glasses to correct the myopia.

After chatting with me for a while, the neighbor lady said something along the lines of, "You know, you're going to be a pretty girl...Some day, I mean. When you get rid of the glasses and braces."

I assume my response looked something like this:

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overheard at the school bus carpool drop-off

A 6th grade boy (mine) and a 4th grade boy (not mine) were vehemently agreeing on the general principle of teachers seeming to go easier on girls when it comes to warnings, discipline "and stuff."

The conversation was peppered with exclamations like, "I know!" and "Dude, it's so unfair!"

Until finally, the whole thing was summed up by an observation delivered by the fourth grader in the most authoritative tone imaginable:

"That just proves my theory that girls get more publicity and stuff than boys."

Touché.

Wait...what?Follow @nicole_mcinnes

the lone FB-er

After a long hiatus, I've decided to return to Facebook. I know, I know: It's breaking news capable of stopping the Earth's very rotation. It's a bit of a sad state of affairs, though, since I apparently deleted my profile with such vehemence that I managed to wipe all traces of myself from the FB system (some may question whether this is even possible: I say, yes it is).

So, I'm starting from scratch, with NO FRIENDS! It's like a bad junior high nightmare where you walk into the cafeteria holding your lunch tray, your headgear strapped firmly into place, and look around, hoping that someone - anyone - will summon you to their table.

Oh, and you're in your underwear, too.

Can you feel my pain? Can you??

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"note to self:

must use the words midget, Saluki and galoshes in next novel (man, I love NaNoWriMo)."

Thus begins the first 2,000-word installment of my 2010 NaNoWriMo journey. My mom's getting in on the action this year, too, which is awesome. She's long been a prolific journaler, but her big quandary for this undertaking is deciding whether to write in English or Spanish. My advice? Do both! It's NaNo, fer cryin' out loud!

What are YOUR NaNoWriMo plans?

What?

Don't have any?

Well, shoot - come on! Jump on the bandwagon! It's a literary (I use the term loosely) free-for-all, and it's going to be fun!

Go ahead and sign up at the official NaNoWriMo site.Follow @nicole_mcinnes

crunched

October, as promised, has been...how shall I put this?....

COMPLETELY INSANE!!!!

There have been tornadoes, birthday parties galore, the loss of a beloved canine friend who was like my first baby, special events at kids' school, work, work, work and more work....

Deep, cleansing breaths are in order.

November promises to be fairly jam-packed, too, but hopefully in a slightly less frenetic way. The final (hopefully) edit of the new YA novel will be (fingers crossed) zipping across the Interwebs to my agent tomorrow, at which point I'll have approximately 2 days to catch my breath before the onset of NaNoWriMo on November 1. Of course, I must help prepare Princess Tiger and Pancho Villa for the Halloween festivities first.

Phew! Yoga, anyone?Follow @nicole_mcinnes

was seriously blessed

to spend this past weekend in some of the prettiest parts of SoCal, like Pasadena and Malibu, where I attended an amazing wedding. Good people, good food and good ceremony (not to mention dancing like a crazed 16-year-old to Cyndi Lauper, Journey, and Hava Nagila) were just what the doctor ordered. It's good to be reminded these days - when so much of the news we all hear is bleak and dour - that simple things, like a young couple, aloft in chairs on their wedding night, starting a new life together under the watchful and tearfully joyful eyes of the families that nurtured them, are what matter most. (Was that a run-on sentence, or am I just up typing too late?) Actually, the older I get, the more I think that those are the kinds of things that matter at all, really.

It's always good to be home, though, even if it means I'll be knee-deep in last-minute novel editing until the end of the month and teaching until the Christmas season offers a break.

It's okay, though. It's all good.

I am exhausted by work and kids, and love and responsibility. But mostly, like I said, I am blessed.Follow @nicole_mcinnes

and speaking of education

A book-banning hornets nest has been stirred up yet again, this time around books such as Laurie Halse Anderson's Speak.

The man with the whisk seems to be this guy - and, hey, I guess it takes all kinds to make the world go around. But, seriously? Having just finished - and loved - The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, I find some of the bashers' comments about that book hilarious as well. OMG - a high school boy talking about (gasp!) sex!

This blogger and this one have some interesting thoughts on the matter, as do many others out there.

What do you think, boys and girls?Follow @nicole_mcinnes

Tune in now!

NBC News is presenting a pretty neat show called Education Nation. It's hosted by Brian Williams, and I'm happy to be a part of the Teacher Town Hall going on live online right now! Check it out - it's an important conversation about where we are and where we're going as a nation where education is concerned.Follow @nicole_mcinnes

to all my non-helmet wearing, horseback-riding friends out there...

...(and, confoundingly, that list includes most of the equestrians I know in Arizona):

Please read this touching, funny (especially the "testicles of steel" part) article by Jody Jaffe in The Chronicle of the Horse.

I was uber-impressed this past weekend when a new student came out for a trial dressage lesson and told me that not only does she have a normal riding helmet, but she also has a western style helmet. It's a bit of an odd look - a "cowboy hat" with a huge noggin' bucket, but the last time I checked, it was possible to fall off a horse while riding western as well.

>:-)Follow @nicole_mcinnes

was gonna sell it

Found it this past spring at Goodwill, tossed into a bin with the random castoffs of various lives.

Figure it's from the 40's or 50's - even got the card of a quilt appraiser so I could get an idea of what it might fetch on eBay.

I'm gonna keep it, though.

Clearly, it has important work to do here.

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this post brought to you by the letters k, v, e, s and h

One of the first things I did when I bought this place was head out with a tape measure to the half-acre that was going to be my arena. I wanted to make sure that the fence lines already in place were going to work for at least a standard-sized dressage arena. They were, and I was a happy camper. Still, a big part of one of the long sides was missing, which was just one more thing to add to the infinite to-do list that perhaps inevitably comes with a fixer-upper. Fortunately, whoever built the original fence did it right, with anchored and cross-braced railroad ties for all the corners, so it’s not like the entire arena had to be built from scratch. Still, running fence is a lot of work, and it’s a hard thing to put at the top of said to-do list with fall fast approaching and other, more practical, issues at hand (firewood stockpiling, front gate replacement so the seasonal cattle don’t invade the property like they did last year when I left one of the gates open, etc.).

Enter The Man, who decided to just show up with the necessary corner posts to finish the job and run that last bit of fence line for me. We’re still waiting for one more fence delivery to make it really really complete, but for all intents and purposes I’m once again blessed with a fully-enclosed arena. I’ll probably wait until spring to hang my dressage letters (the side just completed almost spells out "kvetch," which seems somehow appropriate), since they’ll just spend all winter buried in snow if I do it now, but in the meantime I can feel more secure when my kids and beginning riders are working in there. Also, it’s a nifty turnout for the boys, who have spent the past few days weeding the arena for me.

Oh, did I say boys? Plural? I haven’t mentioned the Project Pony yet? Ah well, there’s a topic for another post.Follow @nicole_mcinnes

grandpa crush

I’ll admit to never having heard of Get Low until this morning when I partook of this TNB Review along with my morning coffee (French press, thank you – I’ve been inducted into the tribe and don’t think I’ll ever go back to drip. Oh, maybe in a pinch, but there’s no comparison between the two…anyway, I digress). So, Cynthia Hawkins absolutely nails what I’ve been feeling about Robert Duvall ever since I first saw Lonesome Dove. Case in point: Last week I Netflixed Crazy Heart, and when RD appeared on the screen, I literally gasped and went, “Oooooh!” One of the commenters on the Hawkins article then used the term “grandpa crush” which is just so…perfect somehow. Because that’s what I often tell people when trying to describe my thing about Duvall: “He reminds me of my grandpa.”

Source: AskMen.com

Speaking of May and December, I recently re-watched Harold and Maude after something like a two-decade hiatus. I remember loving this movie as a kid, but it’s actually gotten better with time. Favorite lines include, “Harold! That was your last date!” among others.

Blogging about movie watching…gah, how trite. But if you knew how summer’s been (mostly crammed full of work and schedules and to do lists – not like a summer at all, really) then you’d be rejoicing with me at these simple pleasures. And, oh! I actually read! A book! So, things are looking up, and I have pictures and stories to share. Like it or not.

>;-)Follow @nicole_mcinnes

bulls & blood, dust & mud

Spent Sunday at the Arizona Cowpuncher's Reunion. Monsoons have been intense for the past few weeks, so the muck and the mud were, too. I took too many pics to post them all, so here are a few I picked and chose. Yeehaw!

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oh hai (been almost a month...oops!)

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mayday 2010 - sycamore rim trail

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So, the last day of the ski season was tons of fun. Snowbowl ended up extending the closing for another weekend because of the great snow base still in place. It was a little hairy at first, because they only had one chairlift turning - and it was the one that went all the way to the top of the mountain. Sure, you can get off at Midway, but on the last day? Who wants to do that? So, our first run of the day, sans warm-up on the more bunny slope-like Hart Prairie, was straight down from the top. We made it just fine, though, and throughout the rest of the day we got to see all the beautiful sights, like Sumo wrestlers, cross dressers and chickens.

...er...huh?

Fortunately, for the guys, there were plenty of cute ski bunnies dressed as fairies, butterflies, etc. at this end-of-the-season tradition as well. (And, yes, that is a bottle of ketchup standing to the left of the chicken. I didn't get his friend Mustard in the picture, but she was there...as was their mutual friend, Hot Dog. I wish I'd gotten a pic of the three of them loading the triple chair.)

So, that was big fun. But then things got a bit rough last week. We were walloped by another out-of-the-blue snowstorm, for one - and Snowbowl was already closed by that point, so it's not like we got to really enjoy it. And I guess it wasn't totally out-of-the-blue. The weather folks saw it coming, and I think it was somehow tied into the rain system that's been walloping California as well. At any rate, my body went back into Permafrost/hibernation mode, and back out came the boots for keeping our tootsies warm and the snowscraper for clearing the windshield every morning before driving the kids to the bus stop. Have I mentioned that I am SO OVER winter?

Then, my daughter's very best friend in the entire universe (VBFEU) moved to another state. The girls were born on the same day in the same hospital, though her mom and I didn't meet each other until they were in preschool. They've been pretty much joined at the hip ever since, and my heart hurts not only for my sad girl, but because I'm going to miss that cute little mug myself. I got to give VBFEU a ride on Zzari before she left (she's completely horse crazy, much like I was at that age), and I made her promise that she'd come back for more rides someday.

But then things got a little better. Friday night was cooking group night, hosted at the lovely home of one of the ladies in the group. She made these outrageous seafood enchiladas with cilantro cream sauce. The rest of us brought things like seasoned rice, a shrimp dip, an avocado salad and flan (that last one was my contribution. It's a tempermental thing, flan: Turn your back on that carmelizing sugar for just one second too long and you'll have charred goo on your hands. The caramel sauce turned out great the second time I tried it, though).

Then, yesterday, the snow and rain finally cleared off, leaving me with the perfect opportunity to dive into my outside chores. First, I planted the live Christmas tree I bought back in December. Then, I finished clearing the dead foliage from around the red hot pokers on the side of the house. I'll know how to handle those better this fall (clipping the greenery back after the blooms are done), so I don't end up with quite as much ugly dead stuff next spring. While I was doing this, one of my neighbors whistled to me from across the fence. He had told me about the divinity that is pickled eggplant (I'd taken his word for it, but I'd had my doubts), and now he had brought over a sample. Okay, have you ever eaten pickled eggplant? It really is divine. This version was from an old "secret" (not anymore) family recipe from southern Italy, and it involved cider vinegar, garlic and crushed red pepper. I can't wait to make it myself.

This morning, I got some work done and then said to heck with it and saddled up Zzari for a long ride out in the National Forest. The trail was slippery in places from the recent moisture, and there were still some patches of snow in the shady spots. But it was good for both of us to head out and stretch our legs and our brains. It was good to remember that life has a way of providing opportunities for re-balancing when things seem to tilt toward the not-much-fun side.Follow @nicole_mcinnes

both hands

For some reason, it seems like everyone I know is tired lately. What's up with that? Is it the change of seasons? The pollen in the air? All I know is we're all acting like we're about ninety years old - everyone from my kids to their teachers to our neighbors... Maybe it's not necessarily a bad thing, though. Maybe we're gathering our energy and strength for the months to come - months that are shaping up for my family to be full of baseball games and barbecues, horseback rides and hikes, visits with family and friends scattered far and wide...and let's not forget home improvement projects (which promise to be ongoing, possibly for years). But it's okay. There's not much I'd trade for our little house on our little acre, especially now that the spring bulbs are sprouting up along with the red hot pokers and new buffalo grass.

I was blessed with an awesome hike with some cool chicks down in Sedona last weekend. We did the Brin's Mesa trail, which involved a drive in to the trailhead that was shockingly reminiscent of the Indiana Jones thrill ride at Disneyland. I didn't feel like schlepping my camera along this time (which I, of course, regretted as soon as we set foot on the lovely trail and were immersed in all that wildness). The halfway point is an outcropping that affords a 360 degree view of Sedona's famed Red Rocks. Vortices and rock cairns abound, as do cacti and some surprisingly lush greenery - even a creek or two to cross. We ate lunch, sunned like lizards on the mesa for a while, and then headed back toward home, stopping at a Sedona watering hole on the way. Oh, we got some yard sales in as well. All in all, a lovely day spent with the girls.

What else? Oh, yeah. Wanna laugh and cry? See Young at Heart. I added it to my NetFlix queue on a whim, and I was so glad I did. Never seen anything else quite like it. Reminds me a bit of what Eddie V. has to say in one of my favorite Pearl Jam songs.

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Happy Easter!

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