Sense of Adventure

It’s not a cliché if it’s literally true, right?

I’d resigned myself to not having honeysuckle blossoms - with their attendant wonderful aroma - of my own this year. I was prepared to be content with the fact that both the honeysuckles I’ve got in the ground, the store-bought one and the one I coaxed into rooting myself from a clipping, seemed established and thriving. I had originally been going to buy one that already had flowers on it, but decided it didn’t look too healthy, and instead picked a more robust-appearing, but flowerless, plant.

Then Saturday afternoon I went out to check on the honeysuckles and discovered two yellow flowers toward the top of the storebought vine. They didn’t broadcast their smell very far, but they definitely had it - that honeysuckle scent I’ve longed for for such a long time.

It’s a big thing for me. I love the smell of honeysuckle; it’s probably my favorite scent. I’ve really wanted my own for years - the whole 21 years I’ve been in my house. I’ve tried in the past to grow them but despite the legendary hardiness of the plants mine died.

Now, having researched intently and done things right, mine grow. And I was rewarded with flowers. Flowers I never expected until next year. Yay!

I would’ve mentioned this earlier but I had no landline phone service over the weekend, hence no Internet. Fortunately, the repair guy arrived within two hours of my calling today and got me back in business. Of course this enables me to upset myself and waste my life online…

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Aren’t hummingbird shadows on the ground a hoot? At first you think they come from something just floating in the air, like the cottonwood cotton that’s starting to drift like snow in the Valley now and give my allergic friends the fits. Then you realize they don’t just drift with the wind, but pause and dart.

I saw that happening as Emma and I were walking on the ditch east of the RGNC this afternoon. I never did see that particular hummingbird. Saw plenty more.

So, how did that story get started that hummingbirds never, and possibly can’t, stop and perch? Somebody mentioned that to me in the last month or so, and I thought about it right off the bat today, as we walked through the leafy tree corridor to the ditch entrance. A hummingbird lit on a branch right over the trail, although it didn’t linger long.

On the surface the belief makes sense: clearly the little bastards have to move around a lot in order to eat vast amounts to keep their furious little metabolisms blazing. And if you spend any time actually watching them, you see fairly quickly that, regardless, it ain’t true. You see them take time outs all the time: on feeders, on tree limbs, on bushes, on wires.

I guess this once again shows we tend not to see what we don’t expect to.

Also, driving the short block from Candy to Veranda to park, I saw a big white bird flying over the RGNC fields. It looked too big and not quite right to be a white pigeon - rock dove - such as you see flying around here a fair amount. I thought maybe it might be a cattle egret, which I have seen in that area, albeit it seems a bit late in the season. It went away to the north.

As we walked north along the ditch it (I’m presuming it was the same big, white bird, since we don’t get them here all that often) flew back over heading south. This time I thought fairly sure it was a gull. It was almost entirely white, with maybe a bit of black at tail and wing tips. This was surprising: we get gulls here, which most people don’t know, so that it startles hell out of ‘em when they do happen to spot the birds. Or make people think they’re crazy, as several have remarked to me.

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Emma and I were walking back down the ditch on the return leg of our walk this afternoon when on the far bank I saw an older Latino guy in a white straw cowboy hat, jeans and a Western shirt coming the other way. That type isn’t superabundant here in the central RGV, but up in northern New Mexico everybody’s grand-dad looks like that. Behind him tottered a four-year-old boy in red shirt and blue shorts - and also a black cape, a Batman mask, and, somewhat inexplicably, carrying a plastic sword.

I did a double-take. It ws so incongruous at first I thought the kid was wearing a black devil mask. Then the older guy said, “I found this caped crusader wandering behind me along the ditch.”

That was so splendid I had to laugh with delight. I’m afraid the lad misinterpreted that as showing disrespect, for he held high his sword and declared, with fierce conviction, “I’m Batman!”

Yes. Yes, you are. Emma stared at him as if he were Ziggy Stardust complete with the Spiders from Mars. I had to hustle her along lest the caped crusader wreak dreadful retribution on us.

A little farther on I tawt I taw a Harrier flying over the ditch. Not this:

But this:

Not pictured: Gamera

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Yep. How anti-Pythagorean of me. (Or not; although as is so often the case, the “debunking” on the linked-to site seems to rely largely on flat assertion. Meanwhile the whole “favism“ thing, claiming Pythagoras’ supposed injunctions against beans were meant to avoid bad medical reactions, strikes me as pretty post facto, mapping modern outlooks onto ancient beliefs, like attributing all vampire legends to porphyria.)

So … where was I? If “digression” ever becomes a marketable skill, Bill Gates will be doing my laundry (I was going to say “windows,” but we all know how that turned out, don’t we?)

Anyway … had a rough night last night, losing sleep to attacks by various forms of the Fear, now fortunately rare but rough when it hits. As a result I slept way late. I was wondering what to eat for my late lunch/super-late breakfast when I realized I wanted beans.

I know. I’m as surprised as you are.

So I went and chopped up some onion, dumped it into a can of black beans, and heated that on the stove. Then I defrosted me a Kosher hot dog and heated that inside a low-carb tortilla. Out of mad inspiration I added the beans’n'onions, creating a sort of weird impromptu burrito.

While the first bite was a disappointment, it actually turned out pretty well. YMMV, as always. And as a side I had some walnuts, making this small meal SuperFood-intensive. Also low on starch and not liable to cause much glycemic loading.

For some time now I’ve tried to reduce my intake of starches and things which would spike my GL (which is a much more useful indicator than glycemic index.) It’s a good way to lose weight as well as head off all kinds of potential nasty health complications. For more information I strongly urge you to read The Glycemic-Load Diet by Rob Thompson. Especially if you have diabetes or think you probably wouldn’t like to.

Indeed it’s often occurred to me to start a blog devoted to the concept called La Vida Low-Starch to share what I learn, from research and doing (which is to say, “cooking and eating.”) Which I might yet.

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So when I finally hauled myself out of bed, hot upon the crack of noon (despite my determination to regularize my sleep schedule - which I will do - inspiration hit me late on the current Rogue Angel book; and while I never wait on inspiration, when it strikes, I don’t dodge) I glanced out the wind-blown front curtains to see my little calico pal Clarice trot by up the sidewalk, intent upon her Important Cat Business. I resolved to go out and say hi; haven’t seen her in a few days.

What with my usual routine I got distracted. I sat down on the sofa by the coffee table to drink my cocoa and ice my left arm, which seems afflicted with tendonitis. And I managed to upset my Giant Red Mug o’ Ice Water with the power cable to the notebook PC.

This was aggravating but fortunately I didn’t let my blood pressure spike over it. Nothing really got hurt; and it’s the desert, for gods’ sakes; the humidity’s like 9%. I did sop up as much excess water and ice cubes with a bath towel as I could. And when I went to toss ‘em out front Clarice reminded me she was in the area by getting up from her comfortable spot in the neighbor’s yard and hopping the fence.

I took the towel and bowl I’d used inside and fetched out some treats, of a kind my cats currently spurn. Clarice and I have been friends for a long time - a lawn-design sketch I did for the front yard several years ago features a depiction of her lying in a corner of the yard - and it really got cemented when, in emulation of my friend Larry, I started giving her treats.

So anyway we hung out a while. I left the inner front door open and TJ came to the screen. And Clarice hissed at him.

(Yes, there really is a prehistoric monster in here. We’re getting there. Seriously.)

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I had to share this with you.

The following is an email I got just now purporting to be from “The lonely woman from Russia [SuzyQ]“. I’ve changed the correspondent’s alleged name to [SuzyQ] in order, I suppose, to preserve the sensibilities of whatever halfwit Russian spammer ginned this up.

Anyway, I think I can promise you this makes the most befuddled Nigerian scam email you have ever imagined seem like Tolkien.

Appended were two photos of a vaguely pretty, putatively Russian young blonde woman, which to my annoyance Thunderbird loaded in the message. I excised these, as well as the return email address, for the protection of my readers.

By the way, the phrase in bold below served as both the email’s subject and its first line. (I’d say, “somewhat surreally,” but if you read on you’ll see that description is just full-spectrum inadequate.)

Now, for your delectation and edification, after the jump (click if you dare! click but beware!) behold the splendor and the glory of:

Hello not the man familiar to me!

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Lately, thanks to the low company I keep (i.e., my fannish friends) (hey, their tastes are low enough they hang out with me) I’ve had a ditty stuck in my mind from an old Mystery Science Theater 3000 episode that featured a Gamera movie:

Gamera is good to eat,
Gamera is full of meat!

Now while the first contention is at best unproven, the second is surely true. Yet I wonder how well advised one would be to sing that song in the actual presence of Gamera:

(thanks to: http://markvine.com/Photo_Kaiju.htm)

I mean, look at him. Looks a bit, well, cranky, doesn’t he? And never forget, he’s over 200 feet tall. Mightn’t singing such a song remind him that you yourself are full of meat, good to eat, and nicely bite-sized?

It’s important to think of these things. Yes? Yes?

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On what I hope’s a more serious note, anyway, I have a plea for all my friends and readers who are also writers – I know some of you are lurking out there. Really.

Which is: how do you keep straight the proliferation of facts – well, facts within your ficton – which you generate in the course of writing a book? Your characters, primarily: their histories, their traits, their interactions, their loves and grudges and weird little habits?

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So I had the German Bomber Channel on for electronic wallpaper a little while ago, and they were showing their Engineering an Empire show on Rome. And I was struck by a wonderful vision. (Thud.)

The scene: a couple years in the future. I’m enrolled in a course at Syracuse University. And the tall, lean, distinguished-looking professor points to some projection or exhibit and in his characteristic deep, slightly nasal, slightly metallic voice asks, “Can anyone tell me what this is?”

And I’ll pipe up in my best Professor Hikita accent, “It’s your hand, Buckaroo!”

Enough whimsy. Okay; like that’s gonna happen.

Yesterday was a good day. Got a lot written. Annja’s current exploit’s really picking up steam, and The Dinosaur Lords are going great guns. Plus I did a lot of necessary world-building on DinoLords, which helped the writing a great deal.

The key there was that I actually wrote story, not just typed notes and drew maps, both of which I also did. I know way too well what kind of a trap that note-making thing can be: a whole novel, The War for America, wandered off into the swamps and bogged down because, in large part, I devoted so much time to writing reams of notes. That and not having an actual synopsis, but rather an idea in my head where I wanted to go. Not so good an idea. It turns out that, while I have a great gift of improvisation, I need a certain amount of structure both to activate it and to direct it usefully. Who’da thunk it? Anyway that’s why I’ve got upwards of 700 pages of novel and am not half done - and have, I judge, upwards of a million words of notes. Seriously.

(Someday I’ll go back and finish that. If events don’t overtake it first. Which is a major possibility.)

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So today I decided, no more excuses, and went forth into the back yard to plant my honeysuckle.

It’s supposed to get really windy later. That struck me as not ideal for planting a tender transplant. Then again, it’s gonna have to get used to our wind soon or late. Also I’ve been putting it off already for, well, a year.

First I dug a hole by the wall to embed the fan-shaped wood trellis I bought from Mundo Wally for the purpose. There proved to be a sort of lip of foundation at the base of the cement-block north wall which served nicely to prop the base against. A small chunk of busted-up cement from something or other I’ve had to demolish since moving in helped wedge it in place from the other side.

At this point, as usual, Emma took my presence in the yard as meaning I wanted nothing more than to play with her. So nothing would answer but that I had to roam around the yard holding my arms out before me like Calvin playing Frankenstein’s Monster and making zombie noises. Which is how one plays the Puppy Monster. Emma happily raced around fleeing the Puppy Monster until she got tired and went to lie down in the shade. Fortunately it wasn’t too hot out there yet.

A few years ago I tried planting honeysuckle and it just flat died. This amazed all the people at local nurseries I asked about it, who unanimously said that honeysuckle’s so robust that if it didn’t have purty flowers it would be roundly hated as a weed. I did a little more research this time.

Hope it helps. Fingers crossed.

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I’m fortunate enough to have some really wonderful friends. Some even go so far as to extend their friendship to Emma Dog. Unless it’s the other way around.

When the group goes out together to restaurants Emma’s Aunt Kathy (Kelly-Kubica) and Aunt Roslee (Orndorff) are especially thoughtful in donating meat scraps for me to take to Emma. Which is very sweet of them, and much appreciated by Emma. And me.

So tonight - technically yesterday evening, now - as threatened I attended the monthly ASFS meeting to hear Ian Tregillis read from Bitter Seeds, the WWII “secret history” novel he just delivered to Tor. As I was going in I was hailed by Kathy. She’d been out to dinner before the meeting, and had actually got a doggie box to bring scraps for Emma. It was just incredibly nice of her. She even brought a baked potato for my compost heap, which is going above and beyond.

It was a great reading, very well received. The book’s going to be killer.

After the meeting several of us (Roslee, who’s a nurse, had to work and didn’t make it out tonight) went by Craig’s house while he prepared some packets for art-show participants. Then we headed over to the Applebee’s on Menaul. There Kathy got another steak (she’s on a reduced-carb diet), and darned if she didn’t send another box o’ scraps home to Emma. So she’s set up for the next few days. A happy dog indeed.

As we headed out to the cars Kathy suggested I check the box she had given me. “Emma won’t much like it if you bring home a box full of broccoli,” she said. “She’ll look at you, like, ‘Why don’t you love me?’ ” And she pulled an appropriately mournful face.

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