Ahh, the sights and sounds of spring...

I got home from work on Friday and took a quick walk in the woods next door. I took a few pictures of our leaning tree before the whole thing eventually falls down (into the woods, not towards the house, thank god!)

I can't remember when this tree first started leaning over, but it's gotten far worse since the start of winter.
And now it's resting against a poor hemlock. It's just a matter of time before both of these huge trees come crashing down.
Here's a close-up of the 7' tall crack in the smaller hemlock thanks to the weight of that heavy oak.And I love this "cave" that was created under it. It's difficult to see from this shot, but it's actually several feet deep in there.

And here's a short video of the toads in the pond. They were making quite a ruckus. We know spring is officially here when we hear these guys chirping away.

The Renaissance Feast

Without further ado - here is my best portrayal of the Lady Anne Boleyn. You'll just have to imagine the height and dark brown hair cause I'm naturally very short and have blonde hair.
And I absolutely loved my new cloak!

Happy 1st Day of Spring!

Although it didn't really feel like spring when I got up this morning and the weather station said it was only 30°F outside. Hopefully things will warm up again this weekend. Last weekend was gorgeous and it totally felt like spring outside. And my winter jacket is seriously starting to fall apart, so it's time for the weather to warm up so I can toss it! I even drew cute little flowers on my whiteboard at work to liven things up a bit.

Oh and our new mailbox post is up and as of yesterday we have resumed mail delivery to the house - yay! The other day I went and returned the keys to our rented PO Box that we were using to re-route our mail. It's funny, I had never had a PO Box before and it felt kinda cool to go in there with the other folks (mostly small business owners in town) and get my mail using a key. Kind of made me feel important in a weird sort of way. But it was becoming a pain to make the detour from B's school every day and it meant that I ended up picking him up later since I stopped at the post office first. It's so much easier to just walk to the end of the driveway instead!

Is it Friday yet?

So the other day on my way home from work, a few new ideas popped up in my head for the book. So I guess the writer's block was just a speed bump of sorts. That's the good news. The bad news is that I haven't had too many ideas for blog postings lately. That and I still don't have a title yet. It's not like I really need a title at such an early point in the story, but it's bothering me for some reason that I haven't been able to come up with a few words that sum it up all nice and neat like a bow on a Christmas present. All in due time I suppose.

But we're gearing up for this weekend's renaissance feast and I'm sure plenty of blog fodder will ensue from those festivities!

An interesting writing tidbit - There was no punctuation until the 15th century.

I'm drawing a blank

I think I have writer's block. I don't know for sure though, cause whenever I've claimed to have writer's block in the past, it's been more like "writer who doesn't want to write" block. In a way you can equate it to a new ache and pain. You think you might know what it could be, but you're not totally sure.

I first conceived the idea for this story one Saturday morning while I was taking a shower. The thoughts just came pouring into my head so fast that I just had to get it all down before I forgot the important details. I wrote for 4 solid hours before going to my cousin's for dinner that day. I think I managed to get down almost 10 pages as well as an outline for the next several chapters. That was a month and a half ago. I now have 136 pages and 13 chapters. I have had a neat system going on when it came to this story. Most of my ideas/scenes/material seemed to come to me on the weekends. I wasn't sure if it was the relaxed state of my mind or the inordinate amount of tea I usually drink on Saturdays and Sundays. But those days were my "thought" days. I usually took the time to jot down the high-level details, but that was it for weekend work. I preferred to let them stew for a bit in my mind before staying up until ungodly hours during the work week to finally type it out in semi-coherent sentences. That was followed by a lunchtime or two to proofread and fix the semi-coherentness and voila - another chapter was done. This trend continued for several weeks - come up with stuff on the weekends...type it out at night during the week.

This past weekend, though was a bit different. I got nada out of my brain this weekend. Not a thing. I just wish it would have told me it was planning to take a vacation. It's not like we had an overly busy weekend either. I even had a few hours to myself yesterday afternoon while J and B were out putting up our new mailbox - YAY! So now I'm hoping I haven't lost my creative streak altogether. Or maybe I'm thinking/stressing too much about it. I'm worried that I may have devoted too much time setting up the back story and trying to develop the characters that I won't have any energy left for the final "punch" at the end. Not to mention I don't even know what that final punch is going to be right now. This little work of art doesn't even have a title yet and for some reason, that's bothering me too.

Maybe I should follow my brain and just take a vacation...

Been spending too much time on Facebook...

...and not enough time maintaining th blog these days! What can I say? I find myself constantly needing to see who writes on whose wall, what all my friends are doing at this very moment, and updating my status whenever I log in. The whole status thing is way too addictive and I find myself typing things into that field even if I don't have anything good to update about! I think my mind has equated it to a one-line blog post. Hence the neglect here at two black cats. So here's a quick recap - B got sick last week, I had a major release at work, we celebrated my mom's birthday, had a few friends over, the cats haven't quite adjusted to the time change and now B is sick again. See - that's almost short enough for a facebook status... Let's see if my mind will allow me to elaborate on some of those.

This past Saturday night we had a fantastic meal at a newly-reopened although not-that-new dining establishment. For the sake of anonymity I'll just call it Abby's but those of you from the area may know which one I'm talking about. It's in an old stagecoach stop and has had 3 owners/names since I can remember. Anyway - the food was delicious and the service was awesome. I think a good time was had by all.

The following day we had a few friends and their kids over for lunch and a movie. Well it initially started out as "lunch and a movie", but it turned into "lunch and some playtime outside" since the weather was so nice this weekend and it was obvious the kids had some serious spring fever. Everything was going great until Sunday night when B woke up around midnight complaining that his left ear was hurting. It appeared as though the dreaded ear infection had made it's return... Then he woke up a few more times after that. I lost track of how many times, but the Children's Tylenol didn't appear to be doing much for the pain. Around 2am I knew there was no way I was going to get back to sleep. So Monday morning we trek out to the pediatrician's and our suspicions were confirmed - he did in fact have an infection in his left ear. This is where things went from bad to worse. I asked the dr to call in the prescription to our pharmacy and we left the office to pick it up. I had a few other things to pick up also, so I was hoping that between the travel and shopping time, it would be ready and waiting for us. Well not so much. A half hour after we left the dr's office and there was nothing at the pharmacy. They checked their system, the fax machine, nothing. Great. So we head home with a miserable B minus his antibiotics.

After a few calls with the dr and the pharmacy, we found out that it could take anywhere from 10 minutes to 3 hours for a script to show up in the pharmacy's "system" after a dr has "called it in." In other words - when they say they'll "call it in", do not assume they are actually picking up the phone and speaking to the pharmacist. They are most likely using the "system" to submit it. So WHY do they say they are "calling it in"??? And why even bother to call it in if it could take 3 hours for it to show up at the pharmacy? Isn't the whole point of calling it in so that it's ready and waiting for you to pick up on your way home? I should have just asked for the damn piece of paper - it would have been filled much quicker. Grrr... Ok, rant over. In the end B did get his medicine and he did get a very much needed full night of sleep last night so we're hoping for a speedy recovery!