The River O'Shea

Before I get going on my blog, I have an interview up at Leah's Literary Lair. Stop on over and take a look if you have time. This includes a little sneak peek at my July book, Edge of Dawn.

There's been some thawing going on in Minnesota--believe it or not--and I have a river flowing through my backyard. I've christened it the River O'Shea. It originates in my neighbor's yard--I've dubbed it Lake Smith. (I don't know their name. ::blush::)

This is the first time I can remember seeing all this water standing like this and I've been in the house three years now. I think. Time flies and all that.



You can see my poor butterfly bush is in danger of being drowned!



You can't quite see the terminus because it's behind the trunk of the tree, but it's there. I also have my other neighbor's water flowing into the terminus which makes it Lake O'Shea, I guess.

Keep in mind that I am not complaining! I love watching the snow disappear. It's the sign that my misery is nearly at an end. I am so not a winter girl.

Spring Fever

After an awful November - January, February turned out to be a good weather month for Minnesota. And almost all the snow had melted by last Friday. I looked out at my tree ring and my garden and I got spring fever. I imagined my yard full of green grass and bright flowers.

I also thought, hmm, I could use one of those garden grabber rakes where you can lift stuff out of the garden without actually having to touch it. You see, my tree ring was filled with dead leaves from the tree and they have to come out.

Friday night, I happened to stay up late enough to get the QVC Today's Special Value (TSV) email and the Woot.com notice for Saturday. Woot had a no-crank hose storage unit and since I was so tired last year of seeing that hose lying alongside my house on the mulch, I thought this would be perfect. So I ordered one. But I absolutely was not, I repeat not going to buy the QVC TSV even if it was three tree peonies.

And then I woke up on Saturday morning and we'd had almost 3 inches of snow. ::cry:: If that wasn't enough, QVC sent me a reminder email about the garden show that was starting in minutes. I flipped over. I was only going to watch. I wasn't going to buy anything--even if I was so ready for spring that I could hardly stand it.

The first thing I saw was the TSV. Three beautiful tree peonies. The price was good--I could get three for just slightly over what I'd normally pay for one--and peonies are one of my favorite flowers. I totally covet my mom's herbaceous peonies, and if they hadn't been so impossibly huge, my dad and I would have divided them last fall. But I digress. So the price for the tree peonies was good, they're one of my favorite flowers, but I was still holding strong because I hate that they send you a little stick and it takes forever for it to grow.

They got me when they held up the three-year-old peonies they were sending. Four branches instead of one stick. I caved and ordered them. I don't know where I'm going to put them, but I now have white, pink, and purple peonies scheduled to be delivered in May. Sigh.

If I'd been smart, I would have turned the channel then. I knew I was in a garden-ready mood. Somehow, though, I made it through the rest of the flower show without buying any more plants. And then the equipment portion started. I was still doing good--until the garden grabber rake appeared. And here I'd just been thinking how much I could use one of those. I ordered that, too.

And a little later it was gardening gloves. I really didn't need them. I have a pair. But these fit tighter so that dirt doesn't fall down the wrists and I thought, wow, that really is annoying in my current pair. Wouldn't it be nice to have a set where that didn't happen? And they came in pink, my favorite color. I dithered and then finally I ordered those, too.

And then I did flip away because I clearly could not be trusted around garden tools or plants in my current mood and I'd already done enough damage. Spring, please hurry!

Adventures in Lawn Sprinklers

Yesterday, my dad decided to bring over the tractor lawn sprinkler for my yard. We haven't had much rain all spring and my grass is looking pretty crunchy right now. I don't know if y'all know what a tractor sprinkler is, but it looks like a miniature tractor and what it does is follow the hose so you don't have to keep moving it. Very nice, but we couldn't use it on my yard last year because it had just been sodded.

He arranged the hose over much of the south side of my yard and then couldn't understand why it wasn't moving. At one point, he hollers through the window into my house that it's sitting in one place, but by the time I put down the laptop and got to the window, I couldn't find him anywhere. I shrugged and went back to work.

A while later, I saw him and went outside to see what was going on and he's still complaining that the sprinkler won't move and he doesn't understand why. He's got the directions open and it's talking about how to position the arms and he's been fiddling with that. I asked, "what do you have it set on?" Normal, he tells me. Uh, Dad, there is no normal. It's hi, lo or neutral which means it remains stationary. I turned to page 2 of the direction book and showed it to him.

Do I need to mention that he wasn't the happiest person on planet Earth at that moment? He'd spent an hour messing with the arms, thinking that was the problem. At least part of my lawn got a good soaking, though. :-)

I also had to shoot another wasp yesterday. Good thing I keep the spray handy. I don't know what it is about that one window on my south side, but this is like the third of fourth time I've sprayed out of it and I haven't had to do it with any of my others. I guess this is a good thing because only the one window is streaked with crap, but it's also a PITA because I don't dare take the screen out to clean it. They can get in the gap between my house and the window edge, and with my luck, I'd end up with a wasp in the house. I've already been through that and I'm not doing it again. Gah!

And in writing news, I'm halfway through my final read through of the WIP and on track to mail this thing tomorrow as planned. Yea! Tomorrow morning I'll be able to post my dancing Hobbes which signifies the end of the book! I can't wait!

The World Is a Scary Place

Sometimes the world scares me. Last night while I was taking a break, I flipped through the stations and saw that Nancy Grace was still devoting an entire show to Anna Nicole Smith. In a headline across the bottom, it said "DNA Tests Due Back Tomorrow!" And yes, they used an exclamation mark.

I do admit to some curiosity as to who fathered the baby because men were coming out of the woodwork to claim her, but I don't need a whole eve-of-the-results show. Just a one or two minute update after the results are in is good enough. Are there people who really are sitting down and watching hour after hour of coverage after all this time? I guess they must be. I'll confess, I'm totally not a fan of CNN Headline News's evening programming. I'd rather have the news every half hour than these people like Glenn Beck (whose logo looks so much like Garth Brooks' logo that I was like, wow, Garth is getting a show?) and Nancy Grace. Of course, I'm still lamenting the fact that neither MTV nor VH1 play videos any longer.

Then there was QVC this morning. I know, I shouldn't be watching, but I had to have something on while I had coffee. There's no baseball at 9am (I want 24 hour coverage!) and The Weather Channel is way too depressing. (3-6 inches of snow possible starting tonight and going into Wednesday.) I look up from email and they've got a wall mounted fish tank that looked maybe an inch wide and the guy is showing a baby's picture behind it. Look, see what you can do? You can have fish on your wall with your grandbaby's picture. Gah! Who's buying this stuff?

Um, no offense if you're one of the people who think nothing could be cooler than a fish tank/picture frame.

Anyway, I'm downloading tropical beach scenes to use as wallpaper on my computer and whining pretty heavily. It's April and they're talking about snow. Snow! They also said that we won't see normal temperatures for another 10-12 days. That's after a week already below normal. You know, I could handle a couple of days of cold, but nearly 3 weeks? Sigh.

Light Warriors

Since I first came up with the idea for In the Midnight Hour, I'd tried and tried to think of a name for the series. Okay, it's only two books right now, but hey, that's a series! And it has the potential to go on indefinitely depending on how it's received.

I'd thought about calling it The Gineal Series after the name of Ryne's people, but that was pretty boring and certainly not catchy. Besides, it says nothing really about the books. Then I thought The Troubleshooters because Ryne is a magical one of those. Except I think Suzanne Brockmann calls her series Troubleshooters, doesn't she? If not her, then there's someone. It was so frustrating. Today, though, it came to me.

The Light Warriors.

I did a search online, both on a search engine and at Amazon and the only thing I turned up was a role-playing game and a book from a vanity publisher. Hurray! The Light Warriors can be used!

I can't believe I didn't think of it before. Ryne's official title is laoch solas which means warrior of light in either Gaelic or the Gineal language--whichever works. :-) I'm all excited about this now. I actually have a cool series name!

And in other news, I have all the windows open in my house--the first time since the cold weather set in last fall--and it's heavenly. I love getting some fresh air in here.