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Sunday, August 31, 2008
And back again
Hm. It's fatally easy to send a few snippets of inconsequentia via Twitter, and feel that you've blogged. Which you haven't. For over two weeks.
Anyway, we're back from our holiday. Wales was beautiful and full of mist and greenness. Every time I go to somewhere with mountains, when I have to leave I feel miserable. The rest of the world is just too flat.
I may try to do a blog post using the Tweets I sent as a sort of skeleton to build on. You can't say much about a two-week holiday using 140 characters a day!
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| Friday, August 15, 2008
No blogs for next two weeks.
The car is full of a million things, the housesitters have a key, everything is as tidy as I can get it given that I've been finishing off admin work all day.
The girls are bored, Sparkler is worried about missing the cats, and Gloworm is worried about missing the house. I am frazzled from packing and work.
We're off to drink coffee and meet Abstract from work, then the next place we'll be is a mountain in Wales. Expect sporadic updates via Twitter only for the next two weeks!
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| Wednesday, August 13, 2008
"Leave Cowie alone!"
Hm.
Sparkler has a friend over. They're all upstairs in Gloworm's bedroom. Generally it's going fine, but after I just heard Gloworm shout, for the fourth time, in tones of increasing annoyance, "Leave Cowie alone!" I found it necessary to echo her, loudly, up the stairs.
Cowie, by the way, is a furry hot-water-bottle cover in the form of, well, a cow.
Today was the well known and widely celebrated Moonpig Day. Well, actually, it was the day chosen - more or less at random - for Gloworm to have her birthday-celebration shopping spree. She decided she wanted that instead of a party this year. Same expense, much less effort: who am I to deny her?
So after a celebratory breakfast at McDonalds, Sparkler went to her friend's house and Gloworm and I, singing 'Yellow Elephant' and 'The Animals Went in Two by Two' drove to Toys R Us, where we bought this:
and this:
and this:
and some Polly Pocket things. When Gloworm realised she wouldn't have to choose between the Playmobil dinosaurs, but - for the first time in her life - she could have them all, she almost couldn't breathe with excitement.
Then, clutching a favoured few of the dinosaurs, she chose Starbucks for lunch and we ate a greek-salad wrap and a prawn-mayo sandwich. Then we came home and set up dinosaur-world all over the sitting room carpet.
It was a lovely day. And, as long as people remember to leave Cowie alone, she seems to be enjoying the rest of Moonpig Day, too.
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| Monday, August 11, 2008
I do have things to say, honest
But sadly at the moment my attention span only seems to cope with sending messages via Twitter.
Summer holidays are upon us. I've taken Sparkler to have her ears pierced, the girls to Sheffield to play in the beautiful fountains in the Peace Garden and buy sugar mice at the old-fashioned sweetshop, the girls to an adventure park where they went on a small rollercoaster and 'trampled' (as Sparkler used to say) on trampolines and went through a maze and down a huge rainbow-coloured slide - and on a very weird contraption that we resorted to calling a seat-dongle because it defies description.
I've been typing up the mess of hell that is the first three chapters of A Cloak of Feathers.
I've been working around the edges. The fabulous joy of my new Samhain job is that admin can be done in five minutes here and five minutes there, so it fits wonderfully around childcare, housework, writing, cooking. I answer emails, forward submissions, talk to people on IM, fill in spreadsheets and databases, and it all fits seamlessly - more or less - around the rest of my life.
I've been checking my order status at www.dell.co.uk. Probably more than is remotely reasonable. If you've been following me on Twitter you'll know what I'm checking for! If not, don't worry: as soon as I no longer need to check my status I'll be updating this blog with shiny shiny photos. Ooh...
What else have I been doing? Envying my boss, Angie James, who is right now as I type sitting in first class on an aeroplane to New Zealand by way of Los Angeles. Fantasy-shopping for mobile broadband modemy-dongle-things. Thinking - again - about whether YA fiction has a responsibility to be - well, responsible - for the messages it gives to young adults. (I'm thinking, personally, the clue is in the title. a) Fiction, hello? b) Young adults, as in will make their own damn decisions, thanks, and not necessarily with relation to what you told them anyway. Yeah, yeah, that needs a whole blog post of its own.)
As a related point, I'm toying with the idea of starting a very small and exclusive critique group for writers of YA fiction. Or at least, YA-friendly/crossover/doesn't-know-what-the-hell-it-is-sometimes fiction, like what I write. (Do you know, I just had to go back and put in all those hyphens? Sometimes 'detail-oriented' doesn't quite seem to cover it.) If you're interested, email me at immihowson AT btinternet DOT com, and we'll talk details (muahahaha).
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| Tuesday, August 05, 2008
A terrible dream
Night before last, Gloworm had a terrible dream.
She dreamt we got a shredder, and she was shredding paper in it.
So far, so unalarming.
Then, rather than the paper, she discovered she was shredding...
...
...
...Taffy Tortoise.
In case you don't understand how truly terrible this was, I present to you, as evidence, Taffy himself:
Taffy, I would like to point out, is about the same age as me. My Granny knitted him for me when I was a baby, and he's been extremely loved ever since. He came with me when I left home, he used to sit on our bed before we had children, and he's been one of Gloworm's most-loved toys for most of her life. Definitely not someone who should go into a shredder.
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Not a very good apology
Immi: So, Gloworm, I understand you kicked Sparkler and didn't say sorry.
Gloworm: I did kind of say sorry.
Immi: What did you say?
Gloworm: Boris.
Immi: How is that saying sorry?
Gloworm: Sorry. Borry. Boris.
Immi: (not managing to suppress laughter very well) That's not an acceptable way of saying sorry. (gestures towards Sparkler)
Gloworm: (with offensive cheerfulness) Sorry!
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