Working on the Next Manuscript

I had all sorts of plans to work in the yard today, but it's raining steadily, so I'm pivoting and having a writing day. I'm working on a sequel to Monk With the Steel-Toed Boots. They're both murder mysteries, the first being set in a Buddhist meditation retreat in the Ontario woods, modelled after the Huong Hai Zen Forest, where I attended a 3-day retreat (the last day done in complete silence. I highly recommend it to anyone!). That book can be found here:

Monk with the Steel-Toed Boots

I enjoyed working with the main character, Gor Manookian, an Armenian-Canadian Detective Inspector, so I'm bringing him back in the sequel, Tiny Little Murder. This one is set in a Tiny House community, and I'm drawing on a friend's experience, since I don't have any direct experience living in a Tiny House. She built her own little house on wheels and has lived in it on a farm with her two kids for 3-4 years, so I turn to her when I have questions. There is something very satisfying about curling up with the laptop (by the fireplace in winter or on the backyard picnic table in summer) and documenting what my imagination comes up with. With coconut cookies on hand, of course.

Once I wrote the same book three times, keeping the same characters but swapping around who was the murderer and who was the victim, with, of course, different motives. It was a great exercise, and I kept the last version as it turned out best. I have heard other writers describe how they outline and plot beforehand, and I should probably try it sometime, but usually I just get a "movie" in my head and just take dictation. I don't know in advance how it will end any more than the reader does! I'll research stuff as it arises during the process, but there isn't much work before the actual writing begins.

Because my writing is indeed kind of like watching a movie in my head, there does tend to be a lot of dialogue. I think sometimes my plots are moved forward too much by dialogue. I am practising advancing the plot through action as much as talk. We'll see how Tiny Little Murder turns out.

I'm Officially a Dinosaur

Our oven/stove has been having trouble after trouble lately (fair enough, it's about 25 years old), so today we decided to bite the bullet and go buy a new one. We went to three different places looking for an electric range. The thing is, we didn't want the glass-top flat-top kind, because we like to use heavy cast iron pots and skillets, and those will scratch up the glass. Also, I do a lot of bottling, which involves boiling a large pot for several hours at a time, and the glass ones just won't hold up to that kind of use.

However, we discovered that each place we visited only had one coil-burner oven on display. Fine, we'll take that one---except every element now has a sensor on it that will turn off the heat if the burner reaches boiling temperature. 

Wait, let me get this straight. You can't boil anything on the stove? No, it's a safety feature, in case Granny is forgetful, so it turns it off for you when it reaches a high heat. So how do you boil an egg or a pot of soup or make mashed potatoes? You don't. No one cooks anymore. Or else you'll have to replace the sensor burners with regular burners. Except those only come in one size, apparently, which don't fit GE ranges (which of course is the only one we could buy). 

Someone (probably a man, let me bet) has designed a range that can't cook. I suppose any self-respecting Italian nonna uses a gas stove, but we are trying to get off of fossil fuels, and it would cost a lot to have natural gas installed into our kitchen anyway. So it has to be electric. So the new range arrives on Tuesday, and I don't know if I can boil anything on it. And I don't know whether my special, expensive canning coil burner will fit it at all. (Canning is so intense it melts regular burners. Canning burners sit higher so air can get under them.)

We also tried to buy muriatic acid for the pool today and were told that they no longer carry it because Health & Safety told them it's too dangerous. So demented Granny can't cook an egg and we can't treat the pool because someone is looking out for our safety. Thanks a lot.

Garden Centre Field Trip

Hubby and I had a spare hour this morning and decided to pay a visit to a favourite garden centre -- Bulow Garden Centre and Landscaping at 2667 Lakeshore Rd W, which is just east of Winston Churchill in Mississauga. This place has been in business for years and has a lot of unusual things I haven't seen for sale anywhere else. On previous trips, we've purchased a bench, a gong, and a garden sculpture from them. I didn't think to take a camera, and we had to dash between rain showers, but it was such a fun, interesting, and uplifting jaunt.

The owner came out to greet us and show us the water plants and bamboo we asked about. A pleasant chat, and then we were free to wander at will through swaths of antique-looking roses, quirky sculptures, lacy Japanese maples, unusual clay pots, banks of colourful angelonia, and lovely older trees. A dog snored gently in a big bed under a circular trellis. There were flowers I've never heard of, a range of succulents to choose from, and a peaceful, shady pergola with such a lush array of bushes and trees that I wanted to sit down on a bench and never leave. This woman is living the life I want to live.

Favourite things seen today: a bronze-coloured Buddha statue unlike any other I've seen, a pale peach climbing rose that made me want to go buy an English cottage just so I could grow it up around the door, a Gothic-shaped metal archway that would look great at the church, and a fantastic pink flowering dogwood that tempted me to rip out my vegetable garden to make room for it. It would be such an amazing addition to my Japanese garden.

Then the rain started pelting down and we ran for the car without buying anything. But it remains my favourite garden centre I've ever been to, and I highly recommend it if you're looking for something unique for your yard. I came away feeling refreshed, as if I'd taken a deep nourishing nap. There's nothing better than getting outdoors, surrounded by beauty, and meeting a person who has a passion for her business. 

The Best Kind of Day

Slept in until 6:00 yesterday, which is practically unheard of

Did my scripture reading and daily catch-up-on-messages

Updated my financial books

Walked down to the gym for a quick workout and a delicious session in the massage chair

Made banana muffins

Had breakfast

Worked in the garden and pruned bushes

Went grocery shopping for just a few items

Had lunch

Wrote for 3-4 hours

Mowed the lawn

Made supper

Worked on a puzzle

Met son's new friend and had Korean barbecue, then did puzzles and yacked all together

No one ate the supper I made, so it's ready for tomorrow instead -- no cooking on Tuesday!

Went to bed with a novel

Pretty much a perfect day.

Georgetown Highland Games

We're into piping competition season once again, preparing to make the rounds of Highland Games throughout Ontario. I made the rounds myself for 30+ years, hauling kids and dogs and cases and water jugs and tents and... well, let's just say it's a major undertaking. And the thrill of it is standing in front of a judge, trying to remember what tune you're supposed to be playing and worrying that the beating sun will shut off your drones or make the sticky tape on your chanter slide around.

I gave up piping six or seven years ago, partly due to health reasons and partly because I'd finally gotten fed up with dealing with 8 yards of wool in a port-o-potty. Now when I go to the games, I can park myself in the shade under a tree and only venture out when I want to hear a particular person or band play, or to browse through the vendors' booths.

I do have to say, the vendors' booths can be quite fun. People sell everything from certificates printed with clan heraldry, handcrafted knives, intricate Celtic-themed pottery, British candy and baked goods, t-shirts, and...well...yesterday someone had a booth displaying rain gutter systems. There are also Clan booths set up to teach about their heritage, and there was a weaving and spinning demonstration. There are also piping and drumming supply houses, where you can grab last-minute bits of uniform you may have forgotten, explore the latest water traps for your pipes, or get new reeds. 

I spent a lot of the day hiding from the heat, even sitting and reading a Pilcher novel while eating Edinburgh Rock (for the uninitiated, it's a candy that most resembles sidewalk chalk). But I did venture out to watch friends and hubby compete and to buy peameal bacon on a bun. The highlight of the day, though, had to be the sheep dog show. The same woman is there every year, showcasing her amazing and highly-trained border collies driving a small group of sheep around the field. She explains what her commands and whistles mean, and it's always a fun event. Yesterday, though, it became quite exciting, as the sheep panicked and leaped over the fence like deer and bounded off into the street outside the venue. But the woman sent her most experienced dog after them, and within a few breathless minutes, the sheep were brought back to the field and duly put in their pen.

It's been fun to watch my husband's students mature and develop in their musical and leadership skills over the years. Two have gone on to become pipe majors themselves. I've seen their confidence grow. One of them always greets everyone with a huge hug, as if he's just so amazed to discover you're still alive and he couldn't be happier to see you. Even though I'm kind of an adjunct and wasn't directly involved in his instruction, my husband was, and this student always bounds over like a joyful puppy to greet me when he sees me. At one point, his father leaned over to me and whispered, "He's everyone's son." And you know what? He feels like mine sometimes. Just because I've seen him grow up in the piping world over the past 15 or so years, and know that my husband was a big part of his journey.

World Food Program

While I'm still figuring out how to add a donation button to my blog page, things are dire in Somalia, and the UN World Food Program can use some urgent help. Please consider contributing if you're able. Thank you!

Donation page:

UN World Food Programme (WFP) | Donate now

Hearing Aid Miracle

My husband got hearing aids not long ago. It took a while to learn how to drive them, but they've made a huge difference in both our lives.

Yesterday, he went out to cut some volunteer maple trees out of our privet hedge, and I went out to assist. As often happens when my husband gets stuck into something, it turned into a five-hour project. It was extremely hot, I could feel the sun baking my skin, and the work involved a lot of scratches and punctures as we tried to remove an astonishing amount of weed trees and dead wood out of this massive hedge. Also a couple of spider bites. A lot of the job involved lying on my back, shoulder deep, trying to reach shoots right at the back. My husband got out a stool so he could attack from the top, reaching down into the hedge with an assortment of clippers and secaturs and pruning snips.

Anyway, we finally finished, cleaned up, set the bins at the side of the house, and went inside two hours past lunchtime, exhausted. All I could think about was jumping into the cold pool and having something to eat. And then my husband realized, to his horror, that one of his hearing aids was missing.

A) These things are not cheap. B) He had a bagpipe competition the next morning (this morning, as I write this), which required he be able to hear. C) He had no idea when he lost it, so it could be anywhere in the house or yard or in one of the many tall bins crammed with yard waste.

We called the cavalry (sons) out of the basement, went back out into the furnace, and started crawling and poking gingerly around the yard, hoping not to step on the hearing aid, wondering if we had any hope, and then my husband remembered his phone had an app to help locate lost hearing aids. It proved to be a difficult thing to use, giving very vague readouts. It was a bit like playing that game we played as children, where one kid tries to find a hidden object while his friends shout "You're getting colder!" "You're getting warmer!" It would have been more helpful if the app worked like Marco Polo, with the hearing aid giving feedback, but no. It gave us a general location, though, at least enough to let us know we didn't have to dig through all the bins.

An hour later, after raking under the hedge, gingerly sifting through everything, standing on the stool and peering down into the foliage, Son #3 had the idea of sticking his head under the hedge and looking up instead of in or down. And there it was! This tiny little comma-shaped electronic device, spluttering and annoyed, hanging from a twig deep inside the hedge.

You have to understand, my yard is big, the hedge is a monster, and my husband had been all over it for five hours. That thing could have been anywhere. It was literally like looking for the proverbial needle in the haystack. And we found it. We're bitten and bleeding and burnt red, our backs may never be the same, I ripped my best pants, but we found it. I hugged my son and told him he was a hero.

Prayer works, folks.