More blogging…

More blogging…

The Wit Continuum is stretching her wings a bit and has opened a new blog over at blogspot for a change.  Love the different text colors you can use (sorry WP!) This blog is dedicated to my study of fairy tales and fiction and is called  Red,Snow, and Sleep.  Visit when you get a chance, and I need followers!

Still working away on my own collection of fairy tale re-writes. Almost complete….just in time for National Novel Writing Month.  Yes, Mercedes (hey baby lets write a novel together), I’m getting my fingers ready to type…I missed it last year, but in February I joined BIAM-Book In A Month Club and wrote a first draft of Red, Snow, and Sleep, my own fairy tale novel (which my new blog is named after). I had a marvelous time, met some cool people and wrote away.  Ended up with 55,ooo words or so (in 28 days no less!).  It still needs a total re-write, but it is there, complete, in my file and it feels damn good.

And so…next week is Halloween week! My kick off is on Sunday with creepy, enticing, hauntingly heartless posts, hoping to cheer the spooky heart in all of you…if you have one…a spooky heart that is…I’m sure you all have a heart, uh, you know what I mean.  Spent some time and have some posts scheduled for next week already.  I love scheduling ahead.  Mmmmm…can’t seem to do that on Blogger….WordPress and Blogger each have their perks it seems.  Hope you enjoy next week’s posts, and Halloween, of course, this Wit’s favorite time of year.  Right around the corner. 

Personal note: Teens are going as a bat (bat Skelanimal hoodie with makeup) and Werewolf (Team Jacob hoodie that says: Who’s afraid of the big bad wolf? She’ll wear a werewolf mask and wolf paw gloves.  I’ll be the human slave driving around a whole pack of wolves and vampire Vulturi from Twilight when all their friends arrive!  Can’t wait!)

I leave you with a writing ‘wit’-icism:  Re-writing takes time, patience, dedication, discipline, sleepless night….a bottle of wine (or two)…basically re-writing sucks!  (except for the wine, of course…)

Peace…

Things That Piss…Me…Off:

#1.  Obama haters.

#2.  People with money who  always plead poverty.

#3.  The war in Iraq.

#4.  Another driver who pulls out in front of you, then glares at you when you pass them.  (I always ask a passenger with me:  Did I have the cloaking devise on?  Was I invisible?)

#5.  Technology:  cell phones, computers, TV etc.

#6.  Lack of Technology:  cell phones, computers, TV etc.

#7.  Nasty comments on blog.  (Haven’t had any lately, but I’m bucking for one)

#8.  John and Kate (but not the plus 8)

#9.  Anytime someone says: “You should…”

#10.  Anytime someone says:  “If I were you I would…”

#11.   When someone says about another woman: “Wow she got old.” or “She looks fat.” or “She gained weight.”  (Like we should all look 21 and be a size fucking 3!)

and #12.  The Pope’s $15,000 gold slippers.

Well Kiddies, summer’s finally over…

Well, it is, whether we like it or not.  It’s not that I dislike the fall.  I actually like it and find the end of the cycle of things evokes a bit of closure in life, with leaves starting to change…soon falling from life, creating a lovely carpet to preserve and nourish growth for next year’s saplings.  But I still feel I missed something this year, and an article I found hit the mark.  So here’s my own personalized version, to make one think…to ease one’s mind…(if I can find it lately…)…

What I did not do this summer…

….walk with my love hand in hand on a beach.

….swim in a clear shining lake.

….vacation at some high-priced cheesy resort, just to get away.

….have a beer in the middle of the day.

….read Shakespeare’s complete works.

 

What I did do this summer….

….experienced family day at a theme park, complete with a ride on a 230 ft. steel roller-coaster, got off and ran back on to ride again.

….swam in crystal clear pools.

….sat on the deck, baking my skin, while I read Fahrenheit 451.

….stayed up late with daughter to watch Aliens, yet again.

Clyde-was not happy being photographed, he is leery of fame...and missing one leg.

….photographed the moon, flowers, a hummingbird that dined in regularly, huge butterflies, one stick bug named Floyd, and one katydid named Clyde.

….drove through a cornfield with the jeep.

….experienced a close encounter with fireworks.

….enjoyed the Rescue Me season.

 

What can I say…the little things make life worth living.

Peace…

Weekend Stories

 

Of course we all got together Sunday, in celebration of Labor Day, a much more muted party, compared to the 4th, but it was nice.  Uncles had family stories as usual, the funny but true, and had us laughing until the bottles were empty…here’s one I had to write down and share, one I’d never heard before two days ago…

My grandfather, who we called Pop, was a coal miner in the 30s and 40s, making about $16 a day.  After work with regularity, he’d head over to the local bar, (what my mom pegged a “beer garden”) to have his usual ’shot and a beer’ (“To keep the dust down,” he used to say).  Upon arriving on one such occassion he saw his friend Al at the bar, and when the barmaid came over to take his order he said, “Give Al one too.”  Now Pop was Slovak, an original from Czechoslovakia, and he had a thick accent which I loved.  When he’d said “Al” the bar maid thought he said “All” and she set up the entire bar with drinks.   Then she went over to my Pop. 

 ”Andrew,” she said. “That will be thirteen dollars.” 

“Jesus Christ,” Pop said, quite shocked.  “What the hell is Al drinking?”

Photo:  From the Pa. Miners Association history images.

Camouflaged

Named him Floyd…have no clue if it’s a male stick insect but…what the hell.

Got to love nature!!

The end of summer…

The end of summer I sense is near…My flowers are fading to a strange shade of grayish pink…but this is how they looked about a month ago.  With everyone gone back to school, this wit is getting a lot of writing done and feeling breathless…I hate the end of summer…but fall has so much texture.  I recently read ( because I’ve been reading so many different things I can’t find the quote or the poet) that the fall is like spring, where every leaf buds into a flower.  I like that…

Peace…

July 4th – The fireworks of my uncle…

Another 4th of July already!  The Wit and family will be spending it with uncle who hosts a big shin-dig in the coal banked reaches of northeast pa.  Around 9 pm or so, after we have all heavily drunk of the wild cisterns of glee that are often called coolers, we will sit back and watch uncle don his viking helmut, hike up his pants, toss another cold one and present us with a show, something much like this.  (well, actually not quite this big, but close, mainly because it is so close!).  Not settling for sparklers, uncles asks the tent guy earlier this week “Have anything else?” to which he is discretly escorted to the back of the gentleman’s truck where cases of United We Stand and other such phenominally named boxes can be found, all perfectly legal, of course.  There is a competition in this neighborhood…fireworks can be seen lighting the sky from all directions, leaving us dizzy and aching in the neck by the time we are on our journey home, exhausted, stuffed, and slightly drunk (except for the driver of course!)  Believe me, you haven’t experienced fireworks until some sparks have fallen on you and you at least have a hair or two singed, or as one year, when Mr. Continuum was struck in the chest by a flaming falling firework shell).  

All hazards aside…Hope everyone has a wonderful Independence Day!  Happy Shin-digs! Let freedom ring!  God bless you all!

Peace…

The Secrets of the Age of Thirteen

Portrait of Girl with Comic Book  by Phyllis McGinley

Thirteen’s no age at all.  Thirteen is nothing.

It is not wit, or powder on the face.

Or Wednesday matinees, or misses’ clothing,

Or intellect, or grace.

Twelve has its tribal customs.  But thirteen

Is neither boys in battered cars nor dolls,

Not Sara Crewe, or movie magazine,

Or pennants on the walls.

 

Thirteen keeps diaries and tropical fish

(A month, at most); scorns jumpropes in the spring;

Could not, would fortune grant it, name its wish;

Wants nothing, everything;

Has secrets from itself, friends it despises;

Admits none to the terrors that it feels;

Owns half a hundred masks but no disguises;

And walks upon its heels.

 

Thirteen’s anomalous–not that, not this:

Not folded bud, or wave that laps a shore,

Or moth proverbial from the chrysalis.

Is the one age defeats the metaphor.

Is not a town, like childhood, strongly walled

But easily surrounded; is no city.

Nor, quitted once, can it be quite recalled–

Not even with pity. 

 

From: The Love Letters of Phyllis McGinley (1954) 

Spring Fever and Bi-Polar Weather

It was a brilliant spring weekend!!! 

And then we woke up this morning…………..

The Shaguar was not happy.