Another View From Castle Alt

Three months ago, I was fairly certain we had all the pets we could handle. With two high-and-mighty Meezer girls and Daisy, a lovable, goofy, anxiety-driven Lab Shepherd mix who acts up when left alone for more than fifteen minutes, but is so contrite afterwards that you cannot stay mad for long . . . well, it's enough to keep any household busy. I think we should own stock in the Dyson company . . . the company that manufactures Swiffers . . . the companies that whip up pet enzyme cleaners . . . the company that bottles Febreze . . . the companies that make Pedi Paws and Scat Mats and those wonderful lint rollers. {Note, I didn't look up said companies. No time. I'm too busy cleaning up all the messes.}

Well, one day in August, one of the neighborhood boys dropped by with a puppy he'd found several blocks away, but which he was certain was homeless and on the brink of extinction. He was a cute little guy. A rat terrier, feisty as all get-out, rather like the Energizer Bunny on a caffeine buzz. But somehow the puppy became our responsibility, since the little boy's father didn't want it at their house, and one look into my nine-year-old's eyes told me there was no way we could take it to the shelter. Not that I could, either. Our local shelter doesn't have the funds to be a No Kill shelter, and his little puppy face would have haunted me forever, not knowing whether he'd been adopted out or not. So we kept him. You know. Just until we were able to find his owners. Just to be sure he was safe and sound.

No owners could be located. Overjoyed, my nine-year-old immediately named him Leo. Which is short for Leonidas , but honestly, I had NO INPUT. Honest.

My Meezer girls couldn't appreciate him. He bounced around too much for their peace of mind. I tried to tell them that he only wanted them to like him, but when he nibbled on their ears and tails and barked at them to come and play, I'm not sure they believed me.

Note the sneer?

Daisy eyed him with curiosity, but also a little confusion. She had gotten used to a very sedate and sleepy existence, livened up by daily walks and an occasional chase up and down the stairs with the cats. Leo ran circles around her, climbed on her, chewed on her ears and her jowls and her belly. He decided that, since he was the only male pet in the household, he should be the Alpha. The girls, naturally, disagreed with that assessment. Every last one of them decided to put the little guy in his place.

All-out war ensued.

While eventually acceding defeat {three against one, such unfair odds!}, Leo has proven incredibly resourceful. The Meezers he likes to keep on their toes . . . on the shelves . . . on the tables . . . on the nearest available human shoulder . . . Or maybe it's just that they prefer looking down at him in sneering disgust to being down on his excitable, playful, rascally level. They know they are the true queens of the household, and never let a chance go by to remind him of that. Daisy has adopted him as her own and lets him have his puppy way with her, serving dutifully in many roles: Chief Chew Toy, Chief Rodeo Clown, Chief Playground Supervisor, keeping him in line with the smackdown of her paw or by sitting on him, and then in quieter moments, Chief Ear Washer and Chief Snuggle Pillow.

Daisy is really good at snuggling. She also makes a good nose warmer.

Leo's not always Mr. Energizer Bunny, though. He does have quieter moments, especially when he doesn't have the girls to distract him. I even managed to capture one.

See?

So, somehow we managed to acquire a fourth furry friend, one who is disrespectful to my furniture, my floors, my shoes, and likes to raid the laundry basket and strew his booty all over the floor. And yet . . . I still kind of melt when he insists on cuddling.

I don't think he's going anywhere anytime soon. Do you?

Love to all on this snowy November afternoon,


Mad {madly!}

The View From Here . . .

I've been asked more than once, and since I've been out and about recently, taking photos of the surrounding countryside, I thought I would share a little bit of what it's like in Maggie's part of the world. And since Maggie shares my world, it shouldn't be too hard.

My home is not grand. It's a 140-year-old Victorian farmhouse that rests on a quiet street in a small town in NE Indiana, complete with wraparound porch and matching bay windows that would make lovely window seats if heating registers didn't negate that possibility. :) It was built at a time when things were made solid and made right {for the most part, heh}. Over the years, things have settled here and there--few rooms are square, floors creak and aren't what anyone would call level--but it has seen a lot in its time, and there is a sense of that. It's a work-in-process, never completed--something is always needing fixed, or fixed-up, or torn out and completely done-over--but it's stately in an everyday-familiar sort of way, and it has a grace and serenity that speaks of having seen many days, many families, many lifelines, and much love, and that appeals to me.

Indiana in the summer is lush and green and beautiful in a way that makes me feel alive and very much a part of the inner workings of the world. I mirror this, as many do on a subconscious level, with my love of hearth and home, with my love of neat and orderly vegetable gardens and wildly chaotic flower beds, clipped lawns, and overgrown trees. I love the Midwest. I love the way that the world progresses all around us, and while it does reach us here, we retain a bit of the old ways, kept sacred by a few of us who remember. I love the circular path of the seasons, and the way that no matter how many years and seasons pass, there is always an air of newness to each one, as though it was the first we've ever witnessed. I love the sound of the wind in the trees, the way the sun looks mid-morning as it glints through tree leaves, and the golden glow of it as it begins its descent in quiet evening hours. I love the rain--wild, at times, and at others, as gentle as a mother's kiss. I love the smell of freshly clipped grass, and the first lilacs of spring. I love the way the wind makes ocean waves out of a field of wheat, and I love the way it whispers through the drying cornstalks in autumn. This is Indiana--all of the Midwest, really--and it is not just "flyover territory," as I've heard it so uncharitably referred to by people on both coasts whose lives move a little faster than ours. You may view our ways of life as being old-fashioned, but that doesn't make us relics. We just blend the old with the new and go on about our business the way people of the heath always have. :)

So, what do we do here?

We hang out {though not often in trees . . .}

We get together for backyard barbecues on indecently hot and muggy summer days, when it would probably be smarter to stay indoors in the air-conditioning . . . and I will not mention the mosquitoes. Or the ants. Or even the earwigs.

We go fishing

and sometimes find unexpected treasures.

We talk to frogs,

make funny faces,

and do goofy things.

Some of us grow out our hair and don't really like being caught in the garden,

but we can always find peace in our own backyard.

Sometimes we venture out elsewhere,














where the antics of the natives never fail to amuse and delight,

and where sometimes we unearth more unexpected treasures along the highways and byways.
We might go for a bike ride through the twilight down a long, deserted road
and discover that beauty lies around every bend.
It can be found in simple things, like a freshly tilled field,
in an old bridge that leads to nowhere,

in the sadness of abandoned homes and farms,

in nature,

even in the angular structure of a feed mill

or a water tower silhouetted by the evening sun.

We weather many storms

but stay strong through it all, because we have each other.

Sometimes we even stay up past the witching hour

and gaze in wonder at the moon.

And when it all gets to be a bit much,

we rest.

I hope you all enjoy this glimpse. This place, these people, are special to me. :)

Wishing you all faery kisses and midsummer blessings,


Mad {madly!}

Mad's List of Universal Truths, Halloween/Samhain-Style

I've always enjoyed all those fun Top 10 lists, and as I was sitting here today, nursing a headache caused by too much makeup, not enough sleep, and way too much sugar, I thought, Hey! Perfect Blogging Opportunity!

Here's what I came up with. Universal Truths for those lovers of Halloween/Samhain. By the way, sorry for the blurry pics. My photographer was a 14 year old who doesn't have the patience to hold still. :)

Ready?

#10) At times like these, a girl can never use too much glitter

#9) Never let a 14-year-old boy loose with a pint of fake blood.

Or faery wings. Yes, that's my son demonstrating his best Owen Wilson pucker below. And yes, he probably got his goofy sense of humor from his mom. I claim no responsibility for the blood above, though. Ick. The wings look totally wrong from behind, by the way.

#8) Always buy more candy than you bought last year {10 big bags, and we ran out in an hour and 10 minutes this year!}

#7) Glitter is something that goes with everything, and as such, should maybe even be used every day

#6) False eyelashes and the right makeup can make any woman look H-O-T, which is definitely cool. No wonder the stars like ‘em so much!

#5) Chocolate will always get a rave vote from Trick or Treaters

#4) Chocolate always gets a rave vote from those persons passing out the Treats, too. ;>

#3) Kitties pick up glitter like crazy

#2) Glitter in the hair one day means looking like Dreamy McSparkle on days two and three, no matter how much you shampoo and brush. Then again, guys seem to like that. ;>

#1) What goes up, must come down... but that can wait until the weekend. :)

There's a whole lotta cobweb on our old wraparound porch, trust me. :)

A few more pics from Castle Alt:

That's about it, so until next year, remember:

Always Practice Safe Hex! And watch out for the zombies!

Love to all,

Mad {madly!}

On Signs, Banishing Rituals, and the Throne of Reckoning...

What led me to write paranormal? Nothing less than a sign. The kind of spiritual sign that is akin to the slap of a frozen salmon upside the head. The kind of sign that says, "Wake up, stupid! You haven't been listening! Go. Do. This. Now."

I need the big signs. I can be a bit dense... though I prefer to blame the constant need for multi-tasking. :)

I had been sticking to writing straight historical romance for so long that I had convinced myself that I couldn't/shouldn't/wouldn't try anything else. In fact, I had accumulated so many rejections that I had slowly, steadily, painfully arrived at the certainty that I would always be two steps behind the market trends in romance; that I was just not a person who could ever consider herself lucky. It just wasn't in the cards for me to be successful in romance.

I'd hit a particularly low point while attending an all-day workshop with a nearby group of writer friends. By that time, I'd already received the "SIGN!!!!!!"--an epic, fun, cool idea for a paranormal themed mystery series set in modern day Indiana--but didn't have the courage to follow the idea to fruition. At this everyday writers workshop, there was an exercise that we were all supposed to take part in, one that smacked of a banishing ritual to me. All writers present were supposed to take a length of toilet paper, and on it we were supposed to write a list of all the things that we saw as obstacles or challenges in the way of our success as writers, any frustrations that were affecting our work, any whining we needed to get off of our chests, and we weren't supposed to be nice, or hold back in any way. If we needed to bitch about anything and everything under the sun, this was our chance.

Well, I try to be a nice person on a day-to-day basis, but that wasn't what this exercise was about, and on that particular day, something inside me just . . . snapped. {I think maybe, just maybe, it was my niceness bone...} I measured out a length of toilet paper, then measured out a little more, broke out my gel pen, and started writing. And writing. And writing. Everyone present was laughing at how long it was getting, and at how fast and furious my pen was moving across the, um, page. I won't go into the details, but suffice it to say, anything that had or was going wrong at that point in my adult life was touched upon. It was negative, and it was petty, and it felt SO GOOD to flush that toilet paper down the throne of reckoning.

And it was a turning point for me. Somehow, in some way, that simple act of symbolically flushing away all of the negativity in my life cleared the way and began to open new doors for me, both spiritually and mentally. I wrote the book that I worried I wasn't a good enough writer to do justice. I started plotting out the series in my airy-wispy-atmosphere-filled-seat-of-the-pants way -- enough to get the bones of it, but not enough to remove the element of synchronicity that keeps me going. I found an agent who loved it, who found a publisher who thought it could work. And from those baby steps, we moved forward with The Bewitching Mysteries.

What do I like best about telling Maggie's story? The freedom. The absolute, utter freedom of creating a world filled with characters I love. Characters who speak to me and whisper their stories. Characters who could be walking the streets of the town I live in {but who, of course, aren't}, who are familiar and down-to-earth and filled with the quirks and idiosyncrasies we all seem to have in abundance. I love being able to bring a taste of Indiana, one of those forgotten states that exist almost nebulously somewhere in the middle of this great nation, into the public eye {and yes, we are aware that most people know nothing about us beyond the Indy 500}. I love being able to show a variety of spiritual and religious beliefs, and I love being able to talk about religious intolerance and hopefully demonstrate that it is never a one-sided issue. I love exploring the spirit world, and the ways that it touches our own. And I love writing Maggie. She is a searcher, and through her journey toward self-discovery I have learned so much about so many lovely spiritual paths. And what's more, I get to do it with a wink and a smile.

Love to all on this lovely autumn day,

Mad {madly!}

A long and winding road... or how I came to be an author of paranormal mysteries

When I first started writing, lo, these many years ago {fourteen, to be precise}, I had no idea if I could write an entire book. Oh, I'd always written -- journals, essays, poetry -- because writing about my experiences was my way of dealing with the world. But a whole book, with characters I could relate to and care about, and situations that made sense, and a story that wouldn't let go? Did I really have the creativity? I didn't know, but I knew I wanted to try.

They say to write what you know, so it seemed sensible to try to write what I was most often reading at the time -- straight historical romance. It was harder than it looked. There were so many wonderful authors out there, so many who inspired me but at the same time made me think I could never be as good. But since I was writing just for myself, there was no pressure, no reason not to continue. Each new scene was a challenge, each chapter completed a major accomplishment. By the time I had finished the manuscript eighteen months later I was well and rightly hooked by the process of writing, but I still thought of myself as a dabbler. Sure, I was writing, but it was just for fun. No one else could possibly want to read my stuff...

I did mention my recent hobby to a couple of friends, and they asked to read what I had written. When they professed to actually enjoy it, I thought they were just being kind... as were members of a writing group I had found all the way across the state. But it got me to thinking. Could it be possible? Did I have a talent for this that I had never really expected to find?

The writing group suggested that I try submitting the manuscript to a New York publisher. So, with courage born of naivete, I went to my bookshelves and made a list of all the publishers represented there. A book at the library described the submission process. Armed with this new and foreign knowledge, I made my best attempt at writing a query letter and synopsis and sent off a few letters. Most of these came back with form rejections. I was more surprised than anyone when I received an actual request for the complete manuscript a month or two later from a major publisher. Back then I was writing on an old model home computer {a big step up from the typewriter I had started on, let me tell you} with an inkjet printer that was slow as molasses at printing off a 400 page manuscript, but print it I did. The expense of postage added to the expense of printing made me gulp, but it was far too late to turn back. I closed my eyes, crossed my fingers, and mailed it anyway.

As you might have guessed, that manuscript never did sell. The publisher kept it for eight months before rejecting it with a one and a half page letter telling me why they were returning it to me. Since I never really expected it to sell anyway, it didn't even hurt all that much. {Or is that pain just dulled by the time that has passed? Hmm...} I set the manuscript and the letter aside and just kept writing my stories, slowly, but surely. But my critique group didn't want to let it go. A letter with details wasn't just any old rejection. It was {and still is} rare to receive that kind of feedback. The publishing business worked with a set of unspoken rules and credos. Best that I learned them now and save myself heartache later.

Armed with my writing friends' collective knowledge, so graciously shared, and filled with a new hope, I continued to write and submit. But with each new manuscript submitted and rejected by all, the hope dwindled, and the self-confidence I had fought to attain began to wither. How could anyone continue to receive so-called "good" rejections for so many years but not sell the books she was writing? Maybe it was just not meant to be. Maybe I was kidding myself about this writing business. Maybe I should just quit while I was ahead.

I came to that point several times. Nearly quitting. Wanting to and not understanding why I couldn't seem to do it, why I clung to that last vestige of... well, not quite hope, but perhaps compulsion might describe it best, and all the while, a part of me was dying inside. Finally, even that part of me reached rock bottom. What was I doing? Why was I torturing myself this way?

Around that time I had had a strange experience where a story idea -- a character herself, really -- had come to me out of the blue and insisted I take down what she had to say, word for word. Information flowed from my brain to my fingers and out on the screen. Three pages of monologue in a kind of "brain dump" I had never before experienced. When all was said and done, I saved the file in my IDEAS folder and promptly forgot about it. I really had no clue what I could ever do with it. It wasn't suitable for historical romance. It wasn't even a romance at all, and furthermore, it was in first person. I had never liked first person! And it was paranormal. Now I have been a lifelong reader and researcher of the paranormal, so that part about it I liked, but it had never even occurred to me to include it in my writing. I was a writer of straight historical romance. This idea would never work for me. It was probably silly to even have saved it. Why-oh-why couldn't I get ideas that would sell?

I nearly gave up on writing altogether during that summer of my supreme discontent. But the universe had other ideas. I did actually stop writing for a few months. I read a lot, but I could no longer find things that sang to me. Nothing that resonated. Was it not enough that I was giving up on writing? Did I have to lose my love for reading as well? It hardly seemed fair.

I thought back to the last story I had read that had really gripped me, that had reached down into the very core of me and refused to let go: Outlander, by Diana Gabaldon. I took the book down again and tried to look at it with fresh eyes. What was it about that book in particular that I enjoyed so much? What I found surprised me. It wasn't the Scottish history or the wonderful Scotsman Jamie Fraser, as compelling as both of those things were to my soul. It was the epic nature of the book, the way it blended so many things -- including the paranormal -- and yet not one felt out of place. A cross-genre book that broke all the rules. It just felt... natural. Right. Meant to be.

And then there was the Goddess writer's seminar I attended, given by the wonderful Barbara Samuels and Jennifer Crusie. These two amazing women spoke eloquently about their "Girls in the Basement," their muses whom they likened to tough-and-difficult-to-please teenage girls. It was when they started writing to please their girls that they felt they truly found their niche. The sweet spot of story. Their seminar really got me to thinking. What if I let my inner self go? What if I forgot all about the editors I was trying to please? What if I forgot all about markets and writing rules and requirements and just wrote something for myself? What would that something be?

My mind kept wandering back to the strange idea I'd had months before. Well, it wasn't romance. It wasn't historical. It was completely and utterly different from anything I'd ever done before... but maybe that was what I needed most at that point in time. Somehow I needed to find the joy again. Maybe this was just what the muses ordered.

So I gave myself permission to turn off all the voices, all the editorial, to break whatever rules I wanted to break for the sake of the story, to just write what came to me through my Maggie's voice. If I wanted to throw in a kitchen sink, then I was going to do just that, and if I wanted it to be orange, then that's what it was going to be. The story idea had come to me as a mystery, so that's what I wrote. Maggie was a fresh voice in my head, like a friend I had known forever, and she made me laugh amidst the darker goings-on in the story. Another rule broken, ha ha! And all of spookiness made it that much better. Light and dark, funny and yet unnerving, modern and yet rooted in the Old Ways... Ghosts, and witches, and murder, oh my! And the story that came as a result scrubbed away the sadness and despair of ever publishing and it renewed my faith in my writing. I was a writer. Whether I was a writer who would publish or not, the fact that I wrote was a part of me that could never be taken away unless I allowed it to be.

Why it never occurred to me before to include the paranormal in my writing, I will never know. Maybe I just wasn't ready. Maybe I needed to discover my inner strength as I expanded my writing abilities. Maybe I had to go through everything I did in order to believe in myself in the end. Whatever the reason, by finally letting go and yielding to the wisdom of the universe, I found myself again. It was a long road, a winding one, but in the end one that gave me confidence and satisfaction both. Sometimes I wonder where the road will end, but I don't allow myself to dwell on that thought too long. After all, the joy of any journey should include points of interest along the path taken as much as the end destination itself. Something tells me I would do well not to forget that hard-won lesson again.


Love to all,

Mad {madly!}
www.MadelynAlt.com

Help... I need somebody, help... not just anybody...

I've come to a decision...

I've decided I'm not cut out for the writing world.

Well, I've decided that same thing several times in the last ten years, and every time I'm absolutely serious when I say it . . . so why doesn't it stick?

I'm a busy woman. Too busy. I have a husband, four active sons {two who will be on their way to college this upcoming week while my dh detours to Thailand, and two who just started their new school year today}, three perfect cats, an adorable dog who nevertheless is the most gleefully disobedient dog on the planet. I have a more than full-time job {necessary if I want to have a house to live in and food on the table}, a hubby who travels, and all of the bills, errands, and chores everyone else has -- although perhaps magnified just a bit, since I do live with five, count them, FIVE males, four of whom are between 6 foot 1 and 6 foot 5, which makes laundry a nightmare. {And did you know that our male counterparts don't see the messes that we do? It's genetic code, I'm told. By them. I don't know that I believe them.} I keep track of daily/weekly/monthly schedules for five other people. I have parents and inlaws who aren't always in the best of health, friends who drop hints about never having the time to get together, relatives whose feelings are hurt if we don't make Every Single Cookout held Every Single Holiday Weekend. Like everyone, I have vehicles that break down, home repairs that never seem to get done, yard work that I might enjoy if it didn't have the chance to get out of hand so darned quickly, doctor and dentist appointments, insurance claims to follow up on, paperwork for college financial aid . . . and on and on, ad nauseum.

Oh, and I write. I think.

So, you can probably see why I would come to this decision every now and again. I think it's probably a pathetic grasp toward regaining sanity in an out-of-control life.

How do you combat this? How do you find the joy in things you love when they become Gottas? And Fasters? The love is there, but it doesn't bubble up to the surface the way it usually does.

Methinks I need my Muse, or at least a fairy with an attitude, to chase the You Need Tos away.

All that being said, I do love the book I'm working on right now. Book 3 in the Bewitching series, with a never-before-used title I thought of all by my little lonesome, which WILL resonate with the Marketing Department, I do believe. But we'll see. No hints as yet, other than the fact that it features an Amish Lothario {yes, you heard that right}, folk magic, and good old-fashioned human failings that drive the plot to the bitter end.

Wishing you all a bit of fairy dust of your very own,

Mad {madly!}

Paranormal Heroines, or why my Maggie jumps when things go bump in the night...

Anyone who has been writing genre fiction for long is bound to encounter The Rules. You know, the ones that other writers toss around with great abandon, like: "Your hero/heroine must be strong. They have to always be active-slash-aggressive, take charge of the situations they find themselves in, and be in command of their lives. You can't write cross-genre -- no one will buy it. Better to stick with one in order to sell. You can't mix humor with darkness -- again, you have to choose to be either funny or dramatic."

My primary goal when I started the Bewitching series was to flush the rules down the toilet and write what felt right.

My Maggie is not a kickass heroine. {Which is not to say I don't love to read them -- I do. I just can't seem to write 'em!} She is a little on the neurotic side, knows enough to question her reactions when the situation warrants it, and is basically feeling her way through life. She isn't drop-dead gorgeous, she isn't model thin, and she doesn't have a smile that drops men to their knees. Her hair frizzes when the humidity is high, she gets sunburned way too easily, and when she doesn't like what she's doing, she tends to procrastinate. She has an acerbic sense of humor that sometimes comes out wrong, but would bite her tongue before purposely hurting anyone's feelings... especially her mother, who drives her crazy. And as she speeds toward her 30th birthday, she has a tendency to wonder if she ever will meet that certain someone.

In other words, she's normal. A person I can relate to.

She's also an intuitive empath. That's another thing I can relate to.

Psychic heroines are a lot of fun, but I wanted to give Maggie something a little bit different. It's always difficult to come up with someone who is fresh and new and yet as familiar to us as our own sisters, but to me that's what Maggie is. She's your average, everyday kind of girl who is still struggling to get somewhere in life when from out of nowhere she finds herself in some paranormally charged circumstances that throw her neat and tidy world view for a loop. But while the discovery of a shadow world hitherto unsuspected knocks her a bit off-balance, it also empowers her. She's always known she was different from everyone around her, but this is the first time she's felt... special. Suddenly things click into place. The kinds of experiences she has always had but used to dismiss as imagination or coincidence have turned out to be real. Otherworldly and a bit magical, yes, but real. And as Maggie is beginning to discover, she's a lot stronger at her core than she ever realized.

This contrast between inner and outer, light and dark, myth and reality, is what keeps me intrigued and keeps me writing. All I can do is hope readers will find it as compelling as I do.

Love to all,

Mad {madly!}

My Maaaad, Mad Little World

In addition to writing, I also work full-time. Things can get a little crazy in my corner of the world. I'm sure you've all been there. We also just took in a dog in the last month, and while he is the most adorable pup in the world, he has, shall we say, a stubborn streak. Anyway, I thought I might share a little about what goes on from day to day:

6:09 a.m. Wake up. Take dog out.
6:12 a.m. Jiggle doggie at the end of the leash, trying to make him hurry. Shiver uncontrollably.
6:18 a.m. Doggie still has not gone. Sh*t!
6:20 a.m. Give up. Drag doggie inside, as he's now discovered what fun romping in the snow can be.
6:21 a.m. Clean up dog mess. Silly dog will romp in snow, but not GO in snow. Sigh.

6:30 a.m. The morning rush to get ready for work and get everyone else out of the house to get wherever they need to get to on time. Because of all of this, you:

8:05 a.m. Enter building, late. Again.
8:07 a.m. Check email. Grumble to self over CERTAIN STUPID people who shall remain nameless, but it shall not reduce the impact of their INCREDIBLE STUPIDITY.
8:09 a.m. Distract self with thoughts of Scottish Hunks. In Kilts.
9:09 a.m. Force self to get to work.
9:15 a.m. Work is simply too much... work. Drift into daydreams. Again.
12:00 p.m. What was I supposed to be doing? Force self to go into panic mode.
2:22 p.m. Check email. Oh, look, some kind soul has sent me a picture.
2:23 p.m. Drool incessantly into keyboard.
3:33 p.m. Wasn't I supposed to be doing something? Oh, yeah. Work. Hard. Very, very hard.
4:33 p.m. Allow self a moment of respite in a new daydream involving Shirtless Scottish Hunks. In Kilts. On Breezy Days.

4:45 p.m. Wow, my workday is done. So soon!

***Mindless driving, errand-running, more driving, and home again...***

6 p.m. How can one little animal make this much of a mess? I think he may be related to beavers--there is not a single piece of wooden furniture that has not been gnawed. And did I mention his toilet paper fetish? Big Sigh. Start sweeping, making dinner, helping with homework, chasing the boys away from the video games. More doggie messes, more kid messes, more video games, good grief!

Muuuuuuuch later...Go into bathroom. Stare into mirror and groan over new wrinkles caused by the aforementioned CERTAIN STUPID NAMELESS PEOPLE WHO SHALL REMAIN NAMELESS, DESPITE THE FACT THAT THEY ARE MORE STUPID THAN ANYONE ELSE IN THE ENTIRE HISTORY OF THE EARTH AND REALLY SHOULD BE POINTED OUT AS SUCH IN ORDER TO SAVE POSTERITY FROM THEIR VAST AND LIMITLESS STUPIDITY. Not to mention the neverending stream of doggie messes.

Decide a bubble bath would be a very good thing.

Drift down into a mountain of bubbles {I'm sure I need not mention the kilted Scotsmen}, steadfastly ignoring the dog, who is now standing on his hind legs trying to drink the bath water.

Love to all,

Mad {madly!}

P.S. Anyone from work who is reading this post -- I'm not talking about you. Honest. And I really do work a lot harder than this probably suggests, as the pile of papers daily being marked 'DONE' and transferred to my filing cabinet will attest.

P.P.S. For my editor -- I really do insert writing into the schedule, whenever and wherever possible. Heh.