Have You Seen A Ghost?

It's been a while since I did a ghostie post but one came up yesterday.
I was talking to a friend who lives in New Westminster, an area not far from where I live now. New Westminster is an old area with many not-so-safe neighborhoods but more areas of great history and charm. When I first moved to the West Coast, I moved into an apartment in this area.
At that time of my life (my late twenties)I used to jog. Seriously. I'd jog 2 - 3 miles every single evening. I'll wait a minute while you pick yourself up off the floor from laughing.

Anyway, I used to jog down a number of streets, particularly 12th Street which is quite long and near my apartment. I was talking about these glory days with a friend and she brought up a ghost in the area that I'd never heard of; the 12th Street Ghost. Scroll down the page here to read a small blurb about it. Anyway, the minute she mentioned a thirteen year old girl ghost who supposedly walks the neighborhood I had this clear vision in my head. A young girl wearing jeans, a hoodie, and a backpack who I often jogged passed on my runs. The reason I remembered her was that I jogged quite late in the evening and I always thought she was really young to be out at dark with her school backpack on. Anyway, when my friend told me about the ghost I went home and looked it up and sure enough, the little ghostie is known to wear jeans, red hoodie and a backpack. Weird.

So that's my near-ghost experience. How about you? Had any suspicious activities in your life?

Or do you want to talk about the fact that school is OUT today? Now THAT'S a scary subject!!

Catch and Release?

Last night on the news I watched President Obama deftly smack down a pest that was bothering him. I was impressed because I'm really more of a fly chaser than a fly killer. It's not that I don't WANT to kill flies. I'm just not fast enough.

When I go after a fly it turns into a huge circus with me screaming at the kids "Do you see it? Where did it go?" and them yelling, "Over there by the lamp!"

Watching the president do it gave me fly-killing-envy. I wish I was such a smooth operator.

I'm not just after flies. Pretty much any insect in my house has chosen to die. I'm sorry, PETA, that's just how things are. Ever since the elbow breaking incident of 1996, I no longer climb on top of chairs to reach spiders on the ceiling but I still hate having them in the house. My husband is part of the catch and release program. However, I'm not above hiring hitmen/hitkids and ordering them to catch that sucker and flush it down the toilet.

How about you? Do you set the bugs free or search and destroy?

How are YOU feeling?

June is always a crazy month for me. It's such a mix of feelings.

<--I'm feeling a little like this.
Intense panic because school will be out in about ten days. TEN days and that means the kidlets will be around ALL the time. I want to get a ton of pages done every day between now and then but it seems life just keeps getting in the way of serious writing time.

I also feel a certain amount of relief. It's the guilty relief that moms feel when they are sick and tired of making those damn lunches and driving the kids to school and to field trips all the time. Although that relief will quickly be replaced when I realize I still have to drive them everywhere all the time for their busy social lives during the summer.

This is how I felt during the MRI-->
My head stuck out of the thing so it wasn't nearly as claustrophobic as I expected. However, it was LOUD! I thought I'd be able to blissfully plot scenes in my head but instead I concentrated on not going deaf. And this was WITH headphones on! Why didn't anyone warn me it would be sooo loud?

The good thing about having a rainbow of emotions this month is that it makes it easier to have emotion on the page. Killing people off is easy. Having characters smooch and make up is also easy but, um, not after killing each other because that would be weird, even for me.

So how are YOU feeling this month? Are things crazy in your neck of the woods?

It's Dangerous Being a Writer

A few months ago I was happily sitting at my computer killing people off, rescuing my heroine and catching the bad guy.

Normally I'm kept quite safe while I put my characters in jeopardy. Not that day. You see I tend to type in awkward positions. I tuck my legs underneath my body and lounge in strange angles.

This started a few years ago when the car I was in was rear-ended by a semi-truck. Migraines and neck pain entered my life and sitting for long periods of time can become painful.

Normally sitting in odd positions is comforting. Usually I'm quite happy as a pretzel. Not that day. That day I straightened up to go fetch coffee and I heard a pop followed by excruciating knee pain.

I did what any self-respecting writer would do and went into research mode. I quickly discovered I damaged the cartilage in my knee. What followed was a series of doctor appointments where my family doc said, "You tore the cartilage in your knee." Then a specialist said, "You tore the cartilage in your knee."

Today I go for a MRI to confirm that, yes, I tore the cartilage in my knee. Just so everyone can be sure.

The very thought of being slid into a long tube for a period of time is causing me to break out in a sweat.

The awful thing is that every single day I still try and twist that leg up underneath me when I sit down. It's a habit that sharp pain is trying to correct.

So have you had a MRI and survived? Do you sit in weird positions at your computer?

It's a bouncing baby girl!

The Vancouver Aquarium as a new addition. Twenty-year-old Beluga whale, Aurora, gave birth to her latest calf on Sunday. Click here and you can go to the beluga cam and see the cutie patootie and her mom.

I've been busy trying to wrap my mind around my new work in progress. For the first time ever I find I'm writing scenes out of order. It's driving me crazy!

A friend told me that it's no different than reading a few books at the same time but it doesn't feel like that to me. I admit I have been known to read a number of books at the same time. For example, just a few weeks ago I had Mary J. Forbes's The Doctor's Surprise Family on my bedside table (great book btw!), Allison Brennan's Sudden Death in my purse (another great book!) and a third book in my car. I'm not giving you the name of the last story because I didn't enjoy it and my momma always told me if you can't say anything nice, well, you know the rest.

Some people I know never read more than one book at a time because they say they get confused by the different story lines etc. How about you? Are you a multiple reader or a single?

How's your elbow?

Once upon a time I fell off a chair and broke my elbow while trying to kill a spider for my daughter. After that I developed a live and let live attitude about spiders in the house. I also get pains in my elbow where surgery took place to remove bone fragments. I didn't think that pain had anything to do with my cell phone usage but apparently a lot of people "stress out the ulnar nerves" by over use of their phones.

Is it just me, or were other people hoping for a more dramatic injury to those who are chronic cell phone users? I'm not talking about the average person but the one whose having a private conversation loudly in public. The other day I was in the library ... the LIBRARY for Pete's Sake! ... and this woman was practically shouting into her phone. I wanted to yank the phone from her hand and beat her with it. Instead, I've decided to go non-violent. From now on I'll print out that CNN article on this elbow injury and hand out copies as a warning.

I admit I use my cell phone far more than I'd like. There's got to be some escape from the ring of the phone, right?

How about you? Are you at risk of an elbow injury?