Disposable pets

We have three cats, all adopted. One was surrendered, one abandoned, and the last was disposed.

Angel was surrendered to a no-kill animal rescue agency, along with her brother, when their owner fell on hard times and couldn't afford to take care of them. It stinks but I understand that. And if anyone surrendered their black and white kitten Angelica to a shelter just east of Toronto, one that services Paws and Claws, she's a happy, healthy almost seven year old cat now (we picked Valentine's Day for her birthday) and is currently curled up snoozing on the couch.

I feel anger when I think of Blackie. Her previous owners left her behind in a shed when they moved. She was just a kitten when we adopted her at eleven months old and she'd obviously been malnourished. Her leg bones are bowed and she's got the oddest walk (which is not helped by her current pot belly). I can't understand and don't want to understand the mentality of someone who would lock a kitten up and abandon her to possibly starve to death.

It's Oreo that has me baffled. We had neighbours who lived across the hallway from us when my children were smaller. They moved in with two older cats and, shortly after we adopted Blackie, they picked Oreo out of a box of "free kittens".

A few months later they decided to move in with a family member who did not want three cats in his home. The Mom was deciding which cat to take to the shelter when I volunteered to take one. This came at the perfect time for us because my children's father (and his girlfriend) had promised the kids a kitten from the litter their cat was going to have. That litter never arrived and the kids were heartbroken they weren't going to get their kitten. Oreo, still a kitten at the time, was just what they were looking for.

A few weeks later the neighbours had a dog, given to them through the family grapevine. Someone's grandmother died, leaving behind an elderly dog. Daughter was disappointed, positive that if we'd waited a few weeks, we would have been given the dog instead of Oreo. I reminded her repeatedly that a) we'd never been offered the dog and b) we had Oreo and why would she trade him for any animal. Daughter was ticked to discover they gave the dog away to someone else shortly after moving due to bathroom issues.

A few years went by then there was a flurry of excitement on Facebook because they were getting a puppy. They'd been looking for ages and found the perfect puppy for their family. Then came the adorable puppy and child pictures. I asked how the cats were getting along with the puppy and got the response of "we got rid of the cats several months ago". Got rid of the cats who were around eight years old at the time.

A short while later she was posting saying she was going to look for a new home for her puppy soon if he didn't stop barking at the vacuum cleaner then wetting in terror. I suggested puppy training classes and provided links to local ones. She responded saying that despite months of looking for the "perfect puppy", she had not once looked into the breed. Apparently anxiety and wetting issues were common. She also refused to look into puppy training classes because hopefully the puppy would outgrow these issues.

I got blocked when I replied the shelters are already full of dogs who didn't outgrow anxiety issues and poor bathroom habits then reposted the training class links. This was at least half a year ago so I'm sure little Coco has been passed along to another family and they've moved on to yet another "perfect pet". We adopted Oreo five years ago this April. In those five years they have gotten rid of three cats and two dogs that I know of. I haven't spoken to them since last summer so who knows if they've gone through another perfect pet since then.

I woke up this morning to find Oreo snuggled against me again, his head nestled on my arm, his legs sprawled, his eyes watching mine... eager for me to wake and rub his tummy. He rolled around on the bed when he realized I was awake, licking my nose and wriggling so I could reach every part of his tummy. Son came into my room before bed last night so I could read him part of my novel. When he left to brush his teeth, he patted his leg and said "Come Oreo, it's tooth brushing time" and Oreo jumped off the bed and trotted along behind. My daughter insists he's a dog disguised as a cat.

I don't think of that family often but every once in a while Oreo will do something completely adorable and completely him and I wonder if they know what they're missing. How do you pick out a pet, promise to care for it, then give it away? How can you love and care for an animal for months or years and then pass it along and forget about it? One child used to ask my daughter and I about Oreo. "He's my Oreo" she'd insist to my daughter. Her mother never asked. Do her other children ever wonder about the pets they no longer own? Will they grow up to care for their own pets or will they grow up to see pets as nothing more than toys? Something to enjoy for a time and pass on once they're "boring".

Sure, I'm the one who gets to deal with the not fun stuff. Oreo very likely has FIV. I know it's not as easily transmitted as I was told when we first adopted him but I can't help but wonder if my other two cats have it as well. And Oreo has allergies, which means they get expensive cat food. We're eating lentils, rice, and pasta while the cats dine on smoked salmon and trout.

But then he walks up beside me, demanding attention, and closes his eyes in ecstasy as I scratch his forehead right above the eyes. His purr deepens, he grabs my hand with both paws and maneuvers it for a chest rub. He stares at me and my heart melts and I wonder once again if they ever know what they threw away.

Sleepy ramblings

I have been looking forward to today. A weekday off work with no one in the apartment except for me and my pets. A day to devote to my novel.

My alarm went off at 7am, just over two hours later than my alarm went off yesterday. You'd think it was two hours earlier by the way I felt. I crawled out of bed and finally managed to get son off to school. He left grumbling that he wished he had a day to sleep in. Meanwhile he slept til the crack of noon on Sunday. My heart bleeds for you kid.

My cat Oreo started yowling almost immediately. You see, he's starving to death; literally wasting away to a mere shadow of his former self. I didn't empty his bowl of the leftovers from last night and replenish it from the tin of goodness, so he was left with stale food. He cried and wailed, circling the bowls like a vulture and likely dreaming of growing opposable thumbs. Then he flopped on the floor beside me, all four paws in the air, dead of starvation, belly flab drooping to the floor. I still didn't feed him so he huffed away to take a nap.

I cracked open chapter two and began revising. I realized last night that I was missing some crucial information. This morning, as I began losing track of sentences and couldn't figure out where to place apostrophes, I realized I was missing some crucial sleep. Evidently a nap was in order for me too.

Every time I decide to take a nap, I forget one important fact. A futon will not comfortably hold three cats and a human. Something has to give and I'm the weak link. I set my timer for an hour, which would leave me with four hours of writing time, pulled my softest pillow off the wicker chair, and settled myself into a comfy position. Seconds later I had a cat butt in my face and a paw under my cheek. Angel decided the pillow was hers too.

Eventually I ended up with a cat back in my face, complete with fur up my nose, and my head positioned in a way rarely seen outside of "whiplash during a car accident" photos. Plus one cat draped over my feet, putting one to sleep a lot faster than I was going, and my 'dying of starvation' kitty sprawled across my hip. All twenty-two pounds of him.

I gave up barely a quarter into the nap. Now I'm hoping peppermint tea will work just as well. And, as I switch back to my novel, I'll leave you with my daughter's current favourite line from the book (one that won't give away any plot):

"I felt like I was in one of those horror movies, the ones where everything seemed perfectly normal until a monster popped up and ate someone's face."

Edited to add: This is what cat sarcasm looks like...

On friend-zoning, nice guys, and the rape culture

 "Friendzoning" is bullshit because "Girls are not machines that you put Kindness Coins into until sex falls out." - Aeryn Walker

My son made a comment using the term "friend-zoned" today and I told him it doesn't exist; there is no such thing. Friend zoning assumes that the person (usually female) would have been romantically interested in another person (usually male) except somehow she got sidelined into thinking of him as just a friend and can't pull him out of that category anymore. He could have had a chance if it wasn't for her silliness.

I told my son that people who think that they've been "friend-zoned" need to grow up and face reality. There is no law that says just because you love someone romantically, they have to like you back. Even if they like you enough enough to be friends, they don't have to love you. That's called a crush, it happens and that's okay. No one dies from a crush.

Friend zoning often seems to happen to the self-proclaimed "nice guys". The ones who insist they treat women well but never get what they deserve. That makes them creeps, not nice guys. If you're treating a woman well just so you can have sex, you're not treating her well at all. You're seeing her as nothing more than an object, a means to your own personal gratification.

Which leads to the whole rape culture. We live in a society where women are taught how to protect themselves from rape. Don't wear overly tight clothes, or clothes that are too low cut or too short. Don't go outside at night, especially on your own. Don't go places alone like trails or laundry rooms or parking garages. And if a woman's assaulted, the first reaction is to wonder what she did wrong. Did she follow the rules?

What we need to do is teach the boys. We need to teach them they are better than this. We need to teach them to respect themselves and others. We need to teach them they are responsible for themselves. We need to teach them that no means no all the time. It doesn't matter if he's two seconds away from penetration. The words "no, stop" mean exactly that. We need to teach them that no one is "asking for it". No one. It doesn't matter if she's walking around naked, she's not asking to be raped. As soon as someone's drunk, the ability to consent is gone. I don't care if she's saying "I want you, lets have sex now". If she really means it, she'll mean it tomorrow and it'll be that much more special if she remembers it or doesn't throw up on you. And if she's so passed out she's non-responsive, you take her to the hospital, not your bed.

And we need to teach the girls they are worth more. They can say "no" without being frigid. They can say "yes" without being a slut. Their worth as a human should not be defined by who's been between their legs and they should give that same worth and respect to others. And we need to teach them that boys can say "no" too. No means no, no matter what gender is speaking and if he's drunk he can't consent either.

We need to treat our children equally when it comes to where they go and how late they stay out. We need to treat them equally when it comes to teaching them about sex and sexuality.

I am leaving a link with a video here. It's worth reading and it's definitely worth sitting down and viewing with your teens. The video shocked me, there are boys my son's age joking about raping a drunk and unconscious teenage girl while laughingly wondering if she's dead. But the video covers, in plain language, exactly why this is wrong and how boys should act instead.

A Horrifying Thing Happened In Ohio. Not Being Creepy Could Prevent It From Happening Again.

(Attempts at) exercise...

I've got the day off today and my son went back to school, leaving me seven whole hours to myself. Talk about bliss! Or it would have been if I didn't immediately tackle his room in search of dishes and laundry. Now I know why he has nothing to wear the day after I do the laundry and where on earth all my bowls and spoons went. I'm *this* close to slapping a condemned sign on his door and writing it off.

After I carried a few loads of dishes into the kitchen and heaped my laundry basket with all the clothes son didn't see, I decided to head downstairs to the gym. I bought a new exercise bra this weekend and an arm band for my MP3 player and wanted to try them out.

Also, I'd dearly love to know if I'm the only one who's ever accidentally hog-tied themselves with an exercise bra and if it gets easier to put on. I'm a bit scared of that thing now.

I walked into the gym and there was a lady on the treadmill. Kiss of death, she had the TV on; that's when I know someone's there for the long haul. The treadmill's the best piece of equipment in the room, especially now that the elliptical died. The elliptical's usable but there's no resistance option now that the battery's dead.

And, of course, she turned the TV up shortly after I arrived. Maybe she was concerned I wouldn't hear the TV through my headphones. I already keep the music low enough I can hold conversations with my headphones on, when the TV's turned up, I can't hear the music at all. Thanks lady but I'm not interested in the beautiful doctors or Jamie Lee Curtis.

I exercised for fifteen minutes (missing my 20 minutes on the treadmill) then headed over to the pool area and discovered it's closed for a pump issue. Thankfully it should be open by this evening. When I left the room, the lady was still on the treadmill.

I walked into the elevator in gym clothes and runners, a towel draped over one arm, water bottle in the other hand, headphones over my ears, and an MP3 player strapped onto my upper arm. There's a woman in the elevator. She looks over and asks, "Are you doing laundry?" I wonder if she'll ask if I'm going to the gym when I drag my waist high laundry basket downstairs.

And now, while it's quiet, I'm going back to edit Small Dreams a bit more.

--------> off to sharpen my hatchet

Contemplating 2013

Today I found myself pondering the irony of planning a healthy 2013 while eating Lindor chocolate balls for breakfast. Maybe there are people out there who eat perfectly all the time, exercise every single day, and always get eight hours of sleep a night but I'm not one of them. Also, I got an absolute flood of chocolate for Christmas. Lindor balls, After Eights, Quality Street mixed chocolates, cookies filled with chocolate hazelnut, and a double handful of hot chocolate packets. The good news is I'll be starting the new year off with clean cupboards. Let's not talk about the bad news *glares at stomach*.

The chocolates are almost gone, just the After Eights are left unless son's been raiding the cupboard again. Nope, just checked and they're still there. Which is fine because two sticks are 50 calories so they'll make a nice treat on my lunch break at work. And onwards to my goals for next year...

1. See my friends more often

I'm starting off well with this one. I've made plans to visit friends on New Year's Day and am in the midst of making plans to hang out with two other friends. Hopefully this will continue throughout the year. The reality is I'm an introvert and I hate the phone. As my kids well know, I refer to it as that damn ringing thing and have been known to yell at it. I also approach it with the caution some people reserve for handling poisonous snakes, which makes it tricky to make plans. But I'm quite easy to entertain. I've had friends call up and say "Hey, we're washing the car and buying groceries. Do you want to come?" And I'm all "sure, I'll be right over". So if you're getting your oil changed and need someone to chat with, give me a call.

2. Write more

Now this one might not transfer to here seeing as I have been writing more and editing more. But it's been in my novel and not here. For years I have worked on my novel, Small Dreams for a few weeks or month then given up in defeat, declaring the novel utter garbage and walking away for several months until trying again. This time it's been different. I still read for pleasure but I'm also reading and picking apart novels. How do I get the characters to show emotion? How do I describe tone of voice? What transitions work better? I don't want to copy my favourite authors, I just want to get a general idea on how to make sections of the novel flow. And I'm cautiously optimistic it's been working. I've been using my teenage son as a guinea pig. Son has language based learning disabilities as part of his autism and has never enjoyed reading. I have bought all sorts of books over the years for him to read and for me to read to him, with minimal luck. Most of the books end up abandoned a few chapters in, with my son saying "Can't we just read tomorrow instead of today?" ad nauseam until I give up. Small Dreams isn't aimed at teenage boys, it's a novel about two young adults, in their early twenties. Jessica (the main character, it's a first person book) and Chris. The book starts the day they find out she's pregnant and ends the day she gives birth. It follows them as they struggle to make a better life for themselves despite Jessica's abusive family and a couple of false friends. Son loves the book and asks me daily if I've got another chapter to read to him. And he has favourite lines he'll remember and quote back a month or so later. I read a section to daughter yesterday and she laughed so hard she nearly fell off the couch. Thankfully it was supposed to be funny.

I submitted Piece of Mind back in October and, quite frankly, don't expect it to be accepted. I tried my best but I wrote 75% of the novel in three weeks and barely managed to scrape across the minimum amount of words for acceptance. I looked over the first few chapters a few weeks ago and realized it needs a lot of work, especially fleshing out Tamara (the main character). I have a great back story to explain why 17 year old Tamara is living on her own and working full time as a hairdresser instead of being in school. The only problem is I didn't add it to the novel. My daughter commented that she kept forgetting Tamara was a teenager as she seemed so much older. I need to add the farking back story. Also, Tamara's an orphan but for half of the book she might as well have hatched. She never once mentions her parents or older sister until she's giving birth, chapters into the book. She loved her parents, I need to have her think of them from time to time.

So my plans for this year are to finish editing Small Dreams and get that book submitted somewhere, hopefully by mid-January, then move on to Piece of Mind, flesh it out and get it submitted. Then resubmit Small Dreams and start fleshing out sequels to both books then resubmit Piece of Mind... and so on until one of them gets accepted. Then I'll run around like a chicken with it's head cut off and start revising.

In between all that I'll write in here.

3. Eat healthier and simpler

Simpler is the key part to this goal. I don't have the time to cook for hours each evening, not while working full time and writing. But I do have fifteen minutes to half an hour to cook pasta, rice, lentils, spinach, etc. And I need to make sure I've got handy things to pack in my lunch like muffins, yogourt, and rolls so I'm not buying extras at work. There is nothing at work (other than the tea and coffee) that fits into my real food diet. Nothing. Even the eggs have well over ten ingredients and the hot powdered beverages are scary. Pomegranate seeds and pistachios are a great snack... a lot better than a chocolate chip muffin with dubious ingredients.

4. Exercise

I have a gym and pool 30 seconds away by elevator. There is no good reason not to use them. Regularly.

5. Honesty

I need to stop using the monster under the bed approach to solving life's problems. You know, hiding my head under the covers and hoping it disappears. This only works for imaginary monsters, not the real ones. When I'm feeling bad, hiding and just saying nothing won't make things better. But sharing will bring support. Same goes for writing in my diary and doing a photo a day. It doesn't have to be perfect. It just has to be real.

And on that, I'm heading out to buy groceries so I've got healthy food for the new year.

Mid winter ramblings

I haven't been writing here in a while. Not that I haven't been writing, it's just that my writing time has been reserved for brief updates on Facebook and mostly working on my novel, Small Dreams.

Today, however, is different. Today I'm home with a cold and my thoughts are skittering around madly like cockroaches when the light's turned on. I'm not really focusing well enough to edit my novel so I'm inflicting my thoughts here where they're being read for free. Not that I'm actually getting paid for my novels yet but I'm hoping that will change some day. I've got no financial hopes pinned here.

I confess, I stink at editing. Small Dreams is continually bouncing around between 452 and 460 pages, kind of like a yo-yo dieter. I hack out some pages, mostly days where the main characters do nothing but go to work, come home, chat over dinner, and wash the dishes (what on earth was I thinking when I wrote those days?) then the pages creep back up in the form of dialogue and observations.

I've been observing my kids more and more for dialogue, especially now that they're teenagers and come up with interesting statements. My son, while hilarious, ends up saying things that don't really suit the characters so it's more my daughter I use. Son, I will share with you.

My son showed signs of his offbeat sense of humour years ago. Picture it. We're standing in a busy line at the movie theatre, waiting to buy tickets. He's the picture of innocence. Bright blue eyes, gleaming dark blond hair, and a smile curving his lips. He clasps both hands together, tilts his head and announces in the sweetest voice ever, "I'm a disturbing little boy." Right out of the blue.

Last week we were grocery shopping and I needed salad fixings (I pretty much always need salad fixings). I went to grab my usual mixed greens and son blurted, "No, you need to buy this one" then pointed at one of those packages of lettuce alive. It was fresh and green so I picked it up. That was when son noticed the root ball underneath.

His eyes widened. "Mom! We have to plant that as soon as we get home.We can plant it in the tree in the living room." Yeah, the ficus tree I have growing behind the futon. Because, a, it would grow so well behind the futon and, b, I want to do flips over the back every time I make a salad. So I reminded him that lettuce needs light and it was not the right time of year to grow anything on our balcony. He looked so disappointed I assured him we could grow lettuce in the summer then wanted to know why he wanted to grow it in the first place seeing as he treats lettuce like it's poison.

"Ben and Bean [our guinea pigs] eat lettuce and they're my friends. I want lettuce for them." He paused and we kept walking then he continued. "They're friends... friends I keep in a cage and never allow free."

Okay then creepy child.

Later on we were walking home and son informed me that his class is learning about people and who to trust. His teacher had a page with pictures of various people and asked the kids who they would pick off the page to trust. Every child but one picked the shot of an innocent looking child. My son picked the 6ft tall man with a mohawk. Curious, I asked him why. Not that I have anything against 6ft tall men with mohawks, it just seemed like an interesting choice.

Son rolled his eyes. "Doesn't anyone watch movies? You never trust kids that age, they're the ones who know where all the bodies are hidden."

The plus side is, if I ever decide to write a horror, I just need to follow my son around with a pad of paper and a pen.

Now my throat has convinced me that an ice cream sundae is a splendid choice for lunch. The chocolate ice cream has calcium and the marshmallow fluff is full of egg whites and protein. And the salted caramel sauce has... well it has... it doesn't matter I'm sure it has vital nutritional requirements my body needs.

My life? What life?

That title pretty much sums up my last four weeks.

Last month I went onto some forums I frequent and discovered a post saying Harper Voyager was starting a new line of ebooks and looking for new authors. You can imagine my excitement. Then reality came crashing down on me. The books were fantasy/sci-fi and could only be submitted from October 1-14th.

I have two books. One is a completed novel called "Small Dreams" that I was in the process of proof-reading, the second was not even named and maybe a quarter completed. The second was young urban fantasy. Small Dreams isn't.

I'd started the second novel after a weird dream. The dream was so bizarre I just had to write it down. Once those couple of paragraphs were written, I expanded on it. What could have happened? Why did it happen? Who did it happen to? How did those characters meet? Soon I had the makings of a novel.

I'd set the main character, named Tamara, as a 35 year old woman and created a love interest for her by the way of 37 year old Thomson. However, the remaining characters were all in their teens. By close to halfway through the book, Tamara and Thomson were relegated to the role of babysitters. I tucked the book away and ignored it.

A year later I opened it again and decided to change Tamara from a 35 year old to a 17 year old. Thomson followed suit, turning into an 18 year old. They were still older than the other characters but close enough in age to be friends instead of babysitters. And frankly, Tamara's relatively immature personality suited being 17 instead of 35. As a teenager she comes off as smart and mature for her age, as a 35 year old she ended up being immature and a bit whiny.

Faced with rewriting this novel or brushing up on Small Dreams, I chose the latter. It was a lot closer to being ready to submit and it made more sense to focus on it. Then came this opportunity. My first thought was despair, there was no way I could finish this book in time. I work full-time and have my autistic teenager living with me. There's only so many hours in one day.

That was when it dawned on me. If I never tried then I was right, there really was no way I could finish this book. The only way I'd know for sure was if I tried. When I opened the novel, it was at just under 30,000 words with at least 10,000 words needing to be deleted. I needed to bring it up to a minimum of 70,000 words.

My life for the past month has consisted of me waking up, getting ready for work, and racing out to the bus. On the bus I sit with a notepad and pen and jot down novel ideas in point form. I work for 8 to 8.5 hours then take the bus home again, re-reading my notes. Then I sit at the computer and write, squeezing out a brief time for eating dinner with my son.

Slowly the framework for the novel built up, I hacked out everything that spoke of "babysitter" and chucked in a new murder to keep it a bit more face paced. Everything in my life revolved around my novel. My son came home from school one afternoon and asked me how my day went. My response? It went fine. Tamara and Dre are on the bus now and she's in labour.

Another evening he asked me what I was making for dinner. I turned around wild eyed and said "I can't make dinner right now. Tamara's giving birth and having rape flashbacks". Son shrugged then said "okay, I'll get out the leftovers". My life? My life was the book.

October first came and went. I was halfway through my novel word-count wise and rapidly running out of plot. Co-workers would ask me if I'd have the novel ready on time and I'd smile and say "of course" and "I'm giving it my best shot". In reality I felt only the second was true. I was trying my hardest but still had 30,000 words to write in two weeks, while adding a lot more plot. I didn't think I could make it but still, the only option was to try. I'd never make it if I gave up. Thanksgiving flew by. I cooked ravioli and begrudged the time it took for the water to boil. We ate and I went right back to my room.

Yesterday morning I sat down at the computer with 60,000 words written... 10,000 words to go. Then I did nothing but write. Our fire alarm went off in the afternoon. I picked up my netbook and wrote downstairs outside our building. By evening I was averaging 1,000 per hour. I was going to do it.

Just before midnight I was at 69,200 words. I decided to save my novel in Word format and finish it up there, just so I knew I had the right word count for submission. My heart sank. Open Office counts every  word written for their word count. Word ignores small words like "a", "and", and "the". Within seconds I'd gone from being 800 words away from minimum to being 3,500 words away. I'd hoped I'd have the novel finished by midnight. By 1am I was up to 68,000. By 1:30am I decided I'd open the submission form and get that finished so I could just attach the novel when I was done. I had the form bookmarked but, when I scrolled down it wasn't there. Instead was a bunch of letters wanting to know why the page had closed so soon. I closed the page and went to bed.

I woke six restless hours later and decided I was going to just keep on trying. I'd find a submission email on the page and email my novel instead. It wasn't the best option but it was better than sitting in my bedroom and crying. I sat back down and wrote the last 1,500 words then edited what I'd written the previous night, adding a few badly missing transitions (note Kathleen... your characters are telepaths, they can't teleport). It was done. At least as done as I could make it today.

I went on the website and found a message saying there'd been a technical error and the submission form was going back up soon. I felt like singing. I felt like dancing. Well not really, that was when I realized it was 1pm, I'd been up for five hours and I hadn't eaten anything. I was also so exhausted my eyes were crossing and I desperately needed a shower. By the time I woke back up and had a shower the submission form was up. I ate before my nap, I think I had soup, I wasn't that awake.

Of course there were a few glitches after that. The biggest, most heart attack inducing was when I made a new word document so I could make sure I had 1,000 words for the submission. I saved it as "first thousand words" then closed it and opened my novel. Piece of Mind opened up as 1 of 3 pages, 1,005 words. I usually save my novel every single night but, last night I'd just gone to sleep. My last saved version was Open Office and I'd written almost 5,000 words since then. I was able to retrieve the novel and restart my heart.

And I am so grateful for my friends who really came through for me, answering questions on Facebook like "what colour is the umbilical cord during birth?" "if someone got shot, where would the best place be?" "are chest tubes removed through surgery and would a minor need someone to sign paperwork?" "what would people grow and raise on a small farm?" and my all time favourite:

Also, lets say someone's killed by a mental attack, described as a thought that pushes into the mind like a knife. In an autopsy, what would make more sense to find, a stroke or an aneurysm? I'm waffling between the two and frankly don't know enough about either to make a decision.

A friend of mine emailed her mother multiple times before we decided it was six of one half dozen of the other, both were similar and an aneurysm could cause a stroke.

And my friends pulled through for naming the novel as well. I tossed out a synopsis and asked for name suggestions. My friend, Robert, came up with Piece of Mind. Which doesn't even get him a cup of coffee but will net a mention in the credits if this ever gets published.

If my friends didn't know I was insane before I started this writing blitz, I'm sure they've guessed by now. A friend of mine posted this on my Facebook page and I felt it summed things up nicely:

And now I need to restart my life. I haven't set foot in our pool in a month. It's in the basement, a 30 second elevator ride away. I haven't read a book other than briefly on the bus. I haven't gone for a walk. And you don't want to see my kitchen or living room. I don't want to see them either. It might be easier to burn them and start fresh. I haven't blogged here either.

I don't know what will happen now. I won't stop writing, that's for sure. I've got Small Dreams to whittle down and polish and I left enough open ends for sequels to Piece of Mind. This opportunity was just that, one opportunity. But first I'm going to go grocery shopping and shovel out my kitchen and then I'm going for a swim.