Keeping this one brief. 2013 sucked in more ways than one. We lost several feline family members and found out most of the rest probably have FIV or leukemia. Our elderly dogs have started showing their age and another had to have emergency surgery to remove two huge bladder stones. I realized I still wouldn’t be able to afford health insurance. We made little progress with the new house — still no wiring — and most of the next month is going to be spent packing, building, and making trips to the vet. As for last year’s resolutions, I only met one: I opened a savings account and managed to hang on to $1,000.
The good? I received 25 rejections, which means I sent stories out almost twice as many times as last year, with helpful feedback to boot as well as one rewrite request (which I intend to get to as soon as this moving business is behind us).
I can’t say I’ve made any resolutions for the new year. I’ll be happy if I can make it through the first couple of months without ripping my hair out. I will keep writing, and reading, and saving. And what needs to get done will get done. Maybe, if there’s time, I’ll make peace with my demons.
As some of you may know, we’ve been slowly — very slowly — moving into our new place for the past six months. It’s taken a lot of trips, and a lot of money, and there’s still the fence to put up and the porch to close in and the animals to move. This afternoon, we packed a few boxes and headed that way only to find the back door swinging in the breeze and the siding underneath knocked out.
They made off with most of the copper wiring and an auger that’d been sitting on the porch. The back door is so damaged it won’t even close, it’s being held shut with a bag of cement.
The cops were called and a report was made. We doubt we’ll hear back from them anytime soon.
They think it was someone we knew, someone familiar with the house. We think we know who’s responsible, but how does that help us now?
Next step is to see how much our insurance will cover, if they’ll cover anything at all.
Last night, our rocker bench got drunk. It’s the only explanation for why it dragged its sorry chipped ass across our back porch before throwing itself into the arms of a lounge chair. Sure, it was raining, but the hard stuff had blown over and the wind had calmed to a whisper. We heard it first, a knock on the back door then a crash and the sound of concrete screaming. Our first thought: The dogs tipped something over, or they were nosing around and nudging a chair along the wall. When we made it to the window, the bench was gone and the dogs were standing in the rain with wide eyes and ears raised.
Now, Cujo and Baby are big dogs — they carry almost 300 pounds between them — but there’s no way they did that. One, I’ve never known them to flip the furniture over, even though they could. Two, they couldn’t have flipped it other, pushed it against the wall, scrape it past the door, then flip it forward, up and over another chair without pulling a shit-ton of junk (cardboard boxes, a small trash can, their water bowl) along with it. Neither could the wind, for that matter. If the wind had been strong enough to pick it up and toss it, that would be one thing. But then we’d be talking about wind capable of lifting something that weighs more than I do yet leaves papers and cigarette butts and spindly tree branches behind.
The dogs were scared. We were paranoid. Stuff like this always happens when we start packing. Three houses and countless cases of furniture moving, pipes bursting, and photos vanishing from their frames. My mother blames it on gremlins she’s only read about. I blame it on ghosts I can see.
That, or the bench was drunk. I just hope the tread marks were worth it.
My resolutions going into the year were simple enough. I intended to switch hosts and revamp the site, which I did. I wanted to read at least 50 books, a goal I’ve set every year for as long as I can remember but never reached. This year was no different, but I did manage to finish 34 which is a personal best. I wanted to write everyday and push out a novella; didn’t happen, but I spent more time fleshing out The Novel and I had two short stories published. Not bad.
The largest chunk of the year was spent searching and negotiating and packing. Yup, we’re moving house. Back to Dogtown proper but in a (hopefully) better location than before. While the circumstances are still crummy, this time we have some wiggle room and we’ll be bringing a few new family members along for the ride.
Someone stole our mailbox then someone else put up a brand new one in the span of an afternoon. That, or they backed into it and did the right thing by replacing it. But the first scenario’s funnier.
I released a small collection of poetry in late 2011 and earlier this year it received its first review. I had to save it, it made me smile.
Oh wow. This book stinks. Its all about blood and killing. If you get it, read it and you will agree. It was NOT for kids. Saying it is intense. You shouldn’t waste your money on things evn if they are free like this one. Instead read harry potter or percy jackson. VERY interesting. Even though they arent like this one, they are for kids. This is a book for adults and not saying it is bad on everything. It is really good to do song writing. I tryed it and this author is good.
“Duval Street” made Ellen Datlow’s honorable mentions list for 2011. I cut out caffeine. I set up Adam Cesare’s shiny new blog. I wrote pirate/ninja smut which surprised me by doubling as back story for one of my favorite characters. I squeed with Mercedes M. Yardley over her book. However brief, Tawny Kitaen started following me on Twitter.
So where to go in 2013? I want to finish 50 books by the end of the year, for real this time. Finish The Novel. I want to write at least 5 short stories (hey, that’s a leap for me!) and see them all published. I want to blog more often, say, twice a month at least. Find a writing group and stick with it. Join SFWA, HWA, or both. Start journaling again. I want to save $1,000 and pay off my credit cards. I want to paint something, even if I have to use a stencil. And I want to finish a meal in public without retching from the nerves.
To fresh starts and new beginnings. Happy New Year’s, all of you.
The Brick House, as we call it, may not have actually been brick. I can remember riding the bus home from school and getting off at a friend’s house across the street where I’d wait for my mom to pick me up. I don’t recall her working then, so I’m not sure why I did that other than to play with my friend’s awesome Video Painter. But every day as I stepped off the bus, I would look to my left toward my own house, perhaps checking for my mom’s car, and I swear to this day that it was brick. Not that it matters. It’s amusing to talk about around my parents, though, as the only brick house they remember is the one beside my Aunt Elaine’s, the only two houses on a dirt road with no name that ran alongside a railroad track. I suppose I’ll talk more about that in another post.
So, the Brick House. Apparently, we were renting it from a sketchy old man who would routinely sneak into the unfinished attic and smoke cigars while flipping through Playboys. Imagine our surprise when my dad told us this while we were discussing the cigar smoke we often smelt there. I guess he thought that would explain things. My mom glared at him for a moment before launching into a series of questions like “How would that old man even get up there?” and “If you knew he was doing it, why didn’t you say something?” The only way to access the attic was via a stairwell behind a door that we weren’t allowed to open – it was full of black garbage bags bursting at the seams. There was a window upstairs that faced the front yard but if anyone had tried to climb up there and slip in, especially a humpbacked old man, hell would have been raised. Unless he did it after nightfall, in which case … ew. I was five at the time, my sister would’ve been three or four. Alone all day with our mom sound asleep, our tuckuses parked in front of the TV with only three easily spooked cats and a hyperactive poodle to protect us.
Yeah, no. I don’t buy it, but it’s been the most logical explanation for the smoke smell thus far.
I watched a lot of TV back then. Besides standing in place and spinning in circles, it’s about all I did. I would set my clock for five till five so I could catch Chip ‘n Dale: Rescue Rangers every morning. David the Gnome followed, and I’d spend the afternoon watching Captain Planet and Pirates of Dark Water (now that I think about it, Dark Water had probably stopped airing by then – I would have watched it the year before). With a few exceptions – Sonic the Hedgehog, a fluffy white cat with a big blue bow featured prominently on the cover of some kids book, Barbie – all of my imaginary friends were swiped from cartoons or horror movies I was too young to be watching.
This has a point, I promise.
I have two very vivid memories from our brief time at the Brick House. The first is of staying up till sunrise, watching TV, and my dad coming home from work and fixing himself a bowl of wheat cereal. He worked nights, and most of the time he’d come in and change out of his boots and head for bed without me ever noticing. I was too enamored with whatever was on the tube. But one morning I noticed, and he sat down on the couch beside me and ate his cereal and neither of us said a word. I was laying on the same couch when I found myself flying around the living room, looking down at myself, my back pressed to the ceiling.
Had I fallen asleep and dreamt the whole thing? I remember it well enough. My sister was playing on the floor beside me while our mom pecked away at the ancient computer in the hallway. The TV was off for once and the sound of clicking keys reverberated through the whole house. I was on my stomach with my right arm hanging over the edge of the couch, my knuckles brushing the floor, and I was thinking about my friends Chip and Dale and Zip and Gadget. They were passing around corn dogs, and for some reason Gadget was wearing a white muumuu. Golly, the things you hang on to. At some point, my mind began to wander and I sensed I was hovering over the couch rather than resting on it. Weird, I thought, before pressing my face into the cushion. Only the cushion was no longer there. I opened my eyes then, really opened them, and stared down at the room from eight feet above. I was snaking around in a wide circle with the hideous popcorn ceiling snagging my hair and the back of my shirt. I was smiling but I never laughed. I was quiet, so quiet my sister hadn’t noticed the transformation despite sitting right next to me. Too quiet.
I blinked once and raised my head from the couch, my arm numb and my eyes dry, my toes starting to tingle. My sister chirped something unintelligible and our mother stepped into the room, swinging a heavy book at her side.
