Anne N. Mouse: Blog

Or at least one reader :) I just received some e-mail from a reader (you should know that I endeavor to answer all e-mail that comes my way) in reaction to four of my poems. Now this wasn't just your standard, 'I love your work' sort of e-mail. No this reader is a poet of high measure and chose to send me 4 poems that reflected what I'd written. If my answers to your messages weren't effusive enough dear reader, I want to say again, publicly, Thank you so much! You made my day!

All sorts of weirdness shows up when you can see an author's stats. For example just a few moments ago my newest story had 33 downloads, yet is in 77 libraries. On the score front it had one vote of 6 yet a cumulative score of 4.97... Like I said strange things happen in the scoring department and how do more people have it in their libraries than have downloaded it? Is that a function of followers? I don't think so... As I have somewhere around 120 (really that many!?) followers....

Or making excuses... I've sat down many days and not passed one keystroke on any writing what-so-ever. I've discussed here my tendency not to write plans which has gotten more than one of the stories I have in progress to a point where I simply can see no way forward. This tendency I'm sure is why my stories tend to have such weak endings. That is because I don't start with at least a destination in mind.
Thus in writing as with any other endeavor the lack of a plan is really the starting and ending point that destroys all hope of accomplishment. Still I have not ever, never ever... learned the slightest thing about plans, or making them.
NO WONDER YOU ARE A FAILURE AT LIFE ANNE! Go drown your sorrows in a bottle of rum, or more likely maddog 20/20...
At least if you kill enough brain cells you can blame that rather than laziness for being the problem in your life.
What drives this rant? Kenn Gannon's blog and the article that he recommends that I have book marked for all the good it will do. After all if you have no clue about how to begin to write a plan, you are pretty much not ever going to get anywhere except spinning your wheels in the same used up patch of ugly!

For Redding Ca it is down right miserable. For other places I imagine you'd think we were experiencing moderately unpleasant weather. Not sure what the temp was today, just know that while working in the rain and wind my hands got to the point where I could no longer feel my fingers, at which point I said, 'No mas!'
Got back to my apartment and have wet gear hanging everywhere, wet gloves near the heat source for the apartment and am generally feeling miserable. My left leg (knee and hip mostly) is feeling about 4 on the scale of pain, but then most days it feels about a 2. Dull deep aches especially around the knee and sometimes in the thigh muscle, that is when my sciatica isn't acting up and making it feel like someone laid a branding iron from my hip to my knee on the outside of my leg. Of course the doc says it is my imagination. I just wish I could send him (or her) depending... a sample of the pain when it is bad. I don't quite lose the use of it, but it can be just short of causing me to lose my lunch if it gets really going. I imagine to sleep tonight I'll use 3 aspirin. I know I know... they're supposed to be bad for you. But then again so is so much pain one can't sleep!

While loading downed branches in a chipper today, I thought I saw a piece of rope (major hazard!) wound up in the branch and trailing back 40 or more feet. I dropped the branch to investigate and found: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toxicodendron_diversilobum Yes indeed ye olde burning oak emulating an ivy plant. No less dangerous to have going into a chipper, but still I hemmed and hawed for a while since it had actually set roots in the bark of the live oak limb that I wanted to shred. Finally I got on the far side of the branch from said trailing vine and very carefully watched my feet and fed it to the chipper. But the presence of ye olde burning oak meant a cold shower tonight when I arrived at home. Not pleasant considering the high temp today was something like 55 degrees Fahrenheit. BRRR all day, then because I was working in a short sleeved T-shirt I sort of look like I might have been cutting today… :(