Art in Progress

I finished watching all the videos for the sculpture class, and now I'm starting my own. It's going great! [throat clearing noises]

Actually, so far it's fine. Here's the drawing I'm starting with. You'd be surprised how hard it is to find a sideview picture of a wolf/fox/whatever that isn't turning to look at the camera. I had to mix a few photos together, but I'm secure in the knowledge that nothing I produce will look anything like the original so it absolutely doesn't matter.

(Yeah, I don't know what the neck is supposed to look like either.)

Then I moved on to making the wire armature. This was attempt two.

Let's just say that mistakes were made on attempt #1, which resulted in four legs of various lengths and then I ran out of wire before I got to the tail. I learned some things.

Anyhow, I'm happy with how it is progressing. The next step is to use epoxy clay to strengthen the armature. I'm reasonably confident I can get through that, though I was pretty confident I could get through the wire armature step in one try, too, so I may be overestimating my abilities.

Right, well, it's time to go bathe kittens again. Enjoy your Tuesday!

Three Minutes

Getting the house in shape for the pet sitter continues...

Yesterday, I looked at the kitchen faucet and realized I was going to have to do something. For the last two years, the handle has been falling off. Basically, if you don't hold it on just right, it comes off in your hand. And if you aren't hanging on to it, it falls down the drain.

It's been a pain for two years, but I've been ignoring it. I looked at it once, and I thought there was a screw missing, so I went back to ignoring it.

But today, I decided to google it to find out what size screw I needed to buy. And that was when I found out the screw that is in there is a hollow cylinder. I wasn't missing a screw. I just needed to tighten it with a hex wrench.

So it took about three minutes (google, watching the start of a video, then finding the right hex wrench, and finally, tightening it) to fix something that's been bugging me for two years.

This is why I should just rent. I'm terrible at this stuff.

Obligatory Photo

How about a picture of two kittens sleeping? They're very messy, but also very cute.

Patronage

Update to Unlabeled: When I was washing the Talenti container, I realized I had labeled it "Pumpkin 11/2022". I'm not sure if that makes the whole thing better or worse...

Short

I have a Patreon. If you're not familiar with Patreon, it allows fans to give a creator a small amount of money every month. In return, the donor receives something like early access to serial episodes, or exclusive maps or pictures.

For those people with their "one thousand true fans", it can pay the bills. For me... well, it pays for the people I support on Patreon plus a cup of coffee or two. Financially, it doesn't make a lot of sense for me to have one at this point given the effort involved. But because I promise to send my patrons two "digital bonus" items every month, it forces me to come up with something small every two weeks. It's a fun puzzle. Most of the content will eventually be offered to my newsletter subscribers, so it's not wasted.

Anyhow, I'm planning to write a short story for the next digital bonus. I think I want to do something that comes after the events of Dragon Freehold. The good news is that book has many things that didn't get tied up at the end of the book avenues for exploration, so I could easily write five short stories that tie in.

At the end of the novel, they know there is a dragon egg out there somewhere and Lisette is on the hook to find it, so I think that will be the main action for this story. Now I just need to figure out the personal problem to get resolved while Remy and Lisette (and Simi the cat) are stealing the egg. I thought I had something, but that involved a third party — it's hard to have a satisfactory resolution to a problem if one person isn't there.

So... I need to think for a while. Maybe I'll put on the Podrunner podcast for a soundtrack and go clean the back room.

Obligatory Picture

I pull out my phone to take a picture and he looks the other direction and closes his eyes. It makes me laugh.

Unlabeled

Today being Saturday, I bathed the kittens in lime sulfur and cleaned/bleached everything in the bathroom. All in all, it's a process that takes about two hours. Two-pound Princess Lemontina is starting to have an attitude about being bathed, which makes it all very exciting. It's always the little ones you have to watch out for...

I made pumpkin soup for dinner since I accidentally thawed the pureed pumpkin. It was an easy mistake to make. Almost everything in my freezer is stored in Talenti ice cream containers because:

• The containers hold almost exactly two cups, so they're the perfect size, and
• the sides are clear so you can see inside, plus the lid screws on, and
• the plastic holds up in the freezer since it was meant for ice cream, and
• I eat a lot of ice cream, so I have a ton of them.

Every time I put something in the freezer, I think oh, of course I'll remember what that is. Fifty-four years old and I still fall for that.

I never remember what it is.

Anyhow, I thought the container held the other half of a can of pizza sauce, and only after I was wondering why it was thawing as a solid did I remember I'd put the leftover pumpkin from the pumpkin pie in there.

I did not use it on pizza — I used honey mustard dip instead, which was better than it sounds — but instead thawed two more unlabeled Talenti containers holding homemade vegetarian soup stock (and I just put them in there last week, so I knew for sure what they were), sautéed  onions and garlic and mixed it all together. The soup was good.

I couldn't taste the pumpkin.

Obligatory Picture

Here's a handsome dog in a bunch of leaves.

It Was a Dark and Stormy Afternoon

It's early afternoon and a big storm is rolling in, so it's already getting dark. But I'm inside where it's dry and warm, the kittens are learning how to destroy their first box, and the dog is snoring on the couch behind me.

Guido had his annual exam yesterday. He yelled in the car and in the waiting room, but then demanded his doctor spend extra time petting him. Guido used to jump onto Keith's shoulders every time Keith tried to listen to his heart, but he's a little less mobile now. (Guido also used to escape from the cat porch onto the roof and I'm okay with those days being over.) At the end of it all, Guido was declared to be in great shape for a 20-year-old cat, after which he got his rabies vaccine and then he yelled at me all the way home.

(At his age, Guido is probably completely protected from rabies already, but I learned my lesson with his sister. I'd stopped worrying about her rabies vaccination status when she made it to 15, and then she got sick and bit someone while they were trying to put in an IV catheter. One rabies quarantine is enough for this house.)

As for me, I'm going to spend some time this afternoon working on the series bible for my cozy mysteries. It's a simple document, with a list of all the facts I've mentioned in the past — character descriptions, locations, pet names, etc. — because there are now two novels and two novellas already published, and trying to keep things consistent would be easier if I don't have to search through all the books.

How many cats does Esther have, and what are their names? Uh... six, and... I know I've named at least one, but... When the series bible is complete, I will have all that info in one place.

Obligatory Picture

Bark textures are kind of cool, aren't they?

Habits

(Habits: I mean the good and bad practices you follow. Not the kind nuns wear. That would be a little weird.)

After a lifetime of trying to wipe out my bad habits, I've pretty much given up on that.

Is eating sweet stuff good for me? No. Am I going to change that now if I haven't in the last 50 years? Also no. So instead of that, how about working to make sure I eat reasonably healthy food otherwise. Overall, it's a win and I can stop worrying about whether eating that chocolate is "good" or "bad".

So my current goal is to find and encourage good habits. 

Twenty minutes, three times a day

This is the whiteboard above my desk:

Yeah, it's not very legible. Whiteboards are hard to write on.

It's Thursday morning and there are an awful lot of squares without Xs in them, but we'll ignore that. Over on the right is the "Exercise - 20 minutes" grid. A few months ago, I added this so I would prioritize getting up and moving. Twenty minutes, three times a day.

Note that it doesn't say "Run" or "Bike". It just says "Exercise - 20 min". That was deliberate. I know myself. If I don't put a time limit on it, I will keep extending it — "yesterday's run was 2 miles, so if I don't run more than that today, I'm failing." It's obvious that can't go on forever, and eventually I either hurt myself or just can't face going out to beat the previous record and stop completely.

So I made it easy on myself. Some days I don't feel like doing much, and on those days, walking around the neighborhood for 20 minutes counts. Some days I garden. Twenty minutes is a fairly easy chunk of time. Even if it's raining or late at night, I can pedal leisurely (or not) on the exercise bike in my living room.

And it works. My blood pressure is consistently lower by 10-20 mmHg when I do this. And it's good for my mental health, too.

Use that early morning time for good

This habit is a little harder for me, but I'm trying. Instead of spending those moments when I'm lying in bed still half-awake to think about all the stuff I haven't done, I work on plot problems. That way, when I get to my desk after feeding all the little people, I'm ready to go. (Writing first thing in the morning is another habit I find helpful.)

Still looking for more

Do you have a positive habit that has been helpful?

Obligatory Picture

This is from the sidewalk in front of the cemetery.

Organic Matter

On my afternoon stroll, I went through the town cemetery. I'm not someone who understands attachment to the dead — for me, a body's just a collection of organic matter, and after death it's all up for grabs for whatever organism needs to use it. Or it should be — I try to be respectful of other people's beliefs on the subject, but I will never understand poisoning the earth with embalming chemicals to keep a body from breaking down naturally.

All that is to say that I don't make pilgrimages to cemeteries because I know people buried there. But this cemetery is within walking distance, and since there aren't any roads running through, it's a quiet place to walk.

Modern cemeteries favor conveniently flat grave markers the landscapers can just mow over, but this cemetery dates back to the 1800s, so it has more upright grave markers.

Lots of small children

Family plots

Even a mausoleum or two

Two of the people buried inside:

• John Wohlfrom, Born Nov. 9, 1832, Died Feb. 13, 1918 "A native of France"
• Mrs. Helena Wohlfrom, Born April 4, 1848, Died Nov. 24, 1907, "A native of Germany"

Above them is "Harry W., Born Dec 15 - Died Dec 22, 1881. Like I said, lots of children in that cemetery.

There are rows of men who died in WWII — there may be victims from other wars in some other part of the cemetery as well.

Lots of names I recognize from streets and buildings around town.

It's a lot easier to find the graves of men than women, though presumably just as many women have died since the town was founded. But the men got big gravestones that lasted, and the women got a little plaque nearby that said "Mother", as if that was their only purpose in life, and the plaques have mostly disappeared under the leaves and dirt. Or maybe the men died first and their wives just got added to the plot later. Either way, it would be easy to believe there were very few women around if you didn't look closely.