Where the Walls are Soft…

This time, he did this:

Thanks, Mushy!

I’m to award it as well, to two bloggers I think deserve the honour. I want one to go to OldGuy, of OldGuy’s Treehouse. He’s a great “tale-spinner”.

The other goes to Suzi, of What It Shwas - because she’s nuts, and proud to be so, and that makes for fun reading every time she posts.

You should go read them. And they should put the above award on their blogs, yes? Yes.

Random Song for the Day: “Ancient Walls of Flowers” - Marcy Playground

This, I mean.

So, now I must go strain my ears once again for that elusive Audible Click, in order to validate the purchase. Screw school for tonight. I’m a writer, dammit.

Random Song for the Day: “Money Worries” - Bedouin Soundclash

David McMahon wants to know:

“What would you like to say to the girlfriend or boyfriend who first dumped you?”

After much soul-searching and heart-delving back into the summer of 1976, I believe I would say:

“You owe me half a strawberry soda.”

Random Song for the Day: “What the World Needs Now is Love” - Al Hirt

“And didn’t
some
ijit come
around that corner
and run
right into my dad?”Blueberries, that is. Yep. My fridge is now home to a 3-quart basket of blueberries that I bought for 20 bucks. That is not a complaint in any form, either, even after Ruby’s latest foray into yesteryear, shortly to follow. 3-quarts of blueberries that I didn’t have to pick, clean (well, rinse, maybe, but a single stem on nary a berry can I see), or get sunstroke for. These ones were picked by Ruby’s granddaughter for 5 bucks cheaper than the stranger-picked ones at the grocery. I’m happy. Ky will be purple in a day or two.

Anyhoo… Ruby said tonight:

My mother picked blueberries every summer. Every dang summer, she packed us all up and made us pick blueberries, too, there was no way out of it. She was still picking blueberries when she was 80, and she was better climbing those hills than any of the grandkids.

One summer, when my daughter Mary was just little, I had to work all day, so I got out of it. Mary was old enough to pick, though, so my mother made her go. All the kids had to pick blueberries, but they got to sell what they picked when they got back. And Mrs. Keach down the road would pay $2.50 for a 6-quart basket, can you believe that? ‘Course, $2.50 was different in them days, too.

Anyways, one day that summer, my mother couldn’t go berry-picking for some reason, I don’t remember why, and I was working, so she sent my dad off with the kids. My dad hated picking blueberries, but he wasn’t about to argue with my mother, so he packed them up in the car and away he went.

Well! They picked that car full of berries! That was a good summer for blueberries, not like this year, which is why you only got 3-quarts instead of the 4-quart basket I thought was coming… where was I?

Me: They picked a car full of blueberries…

Right. They come home that afternoon with all the kids balancing all these baskets just full of blueberries on their knees, and braced on the back seat of the car. That was down back behind Bruce Mines, and my dad had to drive down a steep hill on a dirt back road with a sharp turn at the bottom of it. And didn’t some ijit come around that corner and run right into my dad?

Well! You know how blueberries are…!

Pause in story while Ruby laughs.

And laughs.

And laughs and laughs and laughs and laughs and laughs and laughs and laughs and laughs - I’m not kidding, I didn’t think she’d ever be able to stop. But I do know “how blueberries are”, and I could just imagine the state of that car after the ijit run into Ruby’s dad. So I got laughing, too, and it was some time before Ruby got to her dad having to break the news of this accident to her mother…

Well! My dad had to come home and tell my mother that the car was banged up, all set to reassure her that at least nobody was hurt, least of all any of the kids.

Not once did my mother ask after the kids, or my dad, or the car. But she was fit to be tied over all those wasted blueberries. Can’t say as I could blame her, really, at $2.50 for a 6-quart basket, though.

Random Song for the Day: “Eulogy” - Tool

“All the
people
with blue
ribbons would be
puffed right
up to twice
their size.”In 1925, Ruby’s mother took her to the Bruce Mines Fair for the first time. As far as I know, there still is a Bruce Mines Fair, but I don’t imagine it’s near as interesting now as Ruby describes it. Maybe I should just let her tell it - she’s a much better story-teller.

The fair lasted for three days, and people would be getting ready for next year about the time
this year was finishing up. They had a prize for everything. You could bring all your livestock to be judged, and your preserves, and pies, and quilts. My mother always won first prize for hooked mats, every single year, but she put in all kinds of other things, too; flowers, and canning, and vegetables. Especially carrots; all her carrots had to be exactly the same size. She’d line them all up on the kitchen table and grumble over them.

People would get excited over the fair like you wouldn’t believe. Even the kids had events, like the three-legged race and the potato-sack, but they had other contests for them, too, like “Best Dog” or “Best Cat” and they’d all bring their pets. It’s a wonder all the animals made it through the weekend.

The older girls would put needle-point in - I won once for a tea cloth. The big stores like Sears and Eaton’s would award trophies and such for the best entries, and one of them sent me a silver platter for that tea cloth - had my name engraved on it and everything - I was right proud of that. I wonder where that is now? I don’t remember….

Long pause….

Me, prodding: Did people sell things, too?

Oh, of course! You could sell anything you’d brought, which was why it was so important to win! The winners sold first, and made more money. But you couldn’t take a thing off those tables until all the entries had been judged, so at the very end of the last day, that’s when things got really crazy. All the people with blue ribbons would be puffed right up to twice their size, holding out for more money than people wanted to pay, and all the “losers” would just be trying to get rid of stuff so they didn’t have to drag it all back home again.

My mother spent the whole week before the fair walking on a razor blade, and us along with her, trying to get everything packed up and making sure not to forget anything important.

She took me to the fair for the first time when I was about a year old. That must have been a mess for her to deal with; all that stuff to organize and pack and making lists, all the while with me hanging off her hip. When we got there, she saw they’d set up a Ferris Wheel. She’d never been on a Ferris Wheel before, and that’s all she could think of, but she couldn’t get herself a ride because she had me with her.

She finally run into someone she knew and asked the lady if she’d watch me while she went on that Ferris Wheel. So whoever this woman was, she took me, anyway, and my mother finally got her ride. She thought that was the cat’s whiskers, being up that high and seeing everybody’s house for miles and miles around. She didn’t want to come down again.

When she did finally get off, she couldn’t find me anywhere, of course. There were crowds and crowds of people, and it was some time, probably a couple of hours, even, before she found the woman that had me. When she got me back, she noticed I had a blue ribbon pinned on my dress.

Wouldn’t you know that lady had entered me into the Most Beautiful Baby contest while my mother was on the Ferris Wheel. And didn’t I win?

Me, smart-ass-like: Did she get any decent bids on you?

Random Song for the Day: “Voice on Tape” - Jenny Owen Youngs

A $20 “used” swag lamp joined the family.

Delivered. Pristine condition. Me. Impressed and happy.

I discovered that one of my crap courses might be able to be “traded” for something I can actually use! Gasp!

…and the “worsest” parts of my day…? Hmmmm…. You know what?

Random Song for the Day: “Puttin’ on the Ritz” - Ella Fitzgerald

… the Order of Operations

… the News at Eleven

… Time-Management Made Easy

… the Audible “Click”

… Everything.

Not-So-Random Song for the Day: “I Want It All” - Queen

All the
while
I was
supposed to be
writing about
a loud and
brassy female tavern owner,
all I could think of was, “I should clean the cat-box”.I’m in a bit of an “Odd Spot”, so to speak.

So many good things have happened to me lately under the “What Do I Want to Be When I Grow Up” category. Now that it’s time to actually sit down and do the things I need to do to bring them to fruition, I have lapsed back into bad habits and only got so far as to do the sitting down part.

Week before last, I decided it was time to do something about the backlog of screenplays (one in final draft, some in the middle of first drafts, and many still in the outline stage), and reconnected with my Muse (not to be confused with The Moviequill’s “muse”, please) with a list of all of them, knowing I could count on a non-biased opinion. I was advised to go for the “easiest sell”, a little bit of fluffy comedy/romance called “Mona Monet” that really would sell quickly, I think, once dropped into the right pair of hands. This mind you, wasn’t even in the outline stage, yet, so I was starting from my “Ideas” notebook, but I had to concur at the time that it did seem to be the best one to work on, so I opened a blank page and started with my character outlines.

That much is done. The story itself is also “done” as far as sitting down to write it. The premise is there in my head, along with “beginning, middle, end” in the manner that I write. I just have to fill in all the gaps. This is supposed to be the fun part, because I don’t have to do any work now. This is the time that all the characters get up and breathe and interact without me, and I just type out what I see. About now, I should be having trouble keeping up with them.

Instead, they are all milling around on set in the location of the first scene (and they are not all supposed to be there!), talking amongst themselves, when they are supposed to be living their imaginary lives into reality. They are very successfully ignoring me, God, and having a cocktail party that I’m not invited to, apparently. So I’m going to ignore them back as punishment, for the time being. They’re alive enough now, that they’ll still be there when I’m ready to give them another chance, I think.

All the while I was supposed to be writing about a loud and brassy female tavern-owner, all I could think of was, “I should clean the cat-box”. That’s usually a good indication that my mind is not on what I’m supposed to be doing.

I’ve looked into the door of the room that houses my first script, “Standing Still”, which wrote Itself over four months at the beginning of 2002 (2002!!! Holy ol’ shit, Andre!). It’s still there, in all its ginormousness, waiting for the third and final rewrite that will bring it down to a manageable (read, “sellable”) 110 pages. There’s even a chair in there for me.

But when I walked in there, ready to drop back into the world of a man slowly going crazy, and sat down, all I could think of was, “I should vacuum.”

So, now this past week, when I have a hard decision made about where to send “Ruby” (which is why parts 1-4 have been temporarily removed from the blog), I decided to sit down and finish the story. I know it’s ready; I’ve made concessions with Ruby’s mom, and she’s decided to cooperate with me and tell me her plans.

But when I opened a blank page, all I could think of was, “I want to buy a house.” So I dicked around, playing with numbers and touring the house. Every time I come to the conclusion that I don’t really want to buy this house, the deal gets sweeter. Maybe that ought to be warning enough, considering I’m not yet gainfully employed…? You’d think, huh?!

The problem seems to be, that quiet as I’ve managed to make my mind, I’m not hearing the audible click of the doors to any of those rooms closing behind me when I walk through them. When I hear that click, I know it’s all there, waiting for me to watch the movie and type what I see. In the past, not hearing the click has always meant that I missed a step. Something else has to be done first. I’m pretty sure it’s not buying a house. It could very well be the cat-box again, though.

I know… most writers would call this Writer’s Block. Me, I think it’s Fear. I’m tired of being afraid, and waiting around to start my life. At my age, I’m running out of life.

So (after I clean the cat-box), I’m going to go into Ruby’s room and I’m going to close the door myself. Hopefully, it stays closed.

Random Song for the Day: “You’re Beautiful” - James Blunt