Don't despair, I'm out of action at the moment but..

I'll be back!

East- West Home is best.

It has been over four weeks since I left for Europe and a combination business and pleasure trip. While we had a great time and the sights we have seen have blown my mind away, it is good to be home again...
I can't believe how productive everyone has been. What with Nanowrimo, and publishing successes - I've only written postcards and with Christmas around the corner I guess the next thing I write will be my yearly revenge-- the annual Christmas letter and cards. I wasn't going to send many but it is nice to receive one in the mail so decided to boost the annual earnings of Canadian Storage,... oops make that Post.
Drop a line if you have a mo.
Cheers Robyn

Thursday Thirteen - 13 takes on Fall

They say English is hard to grasp for those for whom it is not their mother tongue... take the word 'fall' appropriate for this Autumnal season and you will understand why...

Fall for - be captivated or deceived by
Fall about - be helpless - usually with mirth
Fall out - quarrel; leave ranks; airborne radioactive substance from nuclear explosion
Fall through - fail to obtain or reach a goal; unplanned descent
Fall down - not stay upright, collapse
Fall Guy - easy victim, scapegoat
Fall on - fail; assault; come across hard times; get lucky; kill oneself
Fall in - take place in line; collaborate with others; begin a conversation;lapse or revert; a specified state
Fall foul of - come into collision with; quarrel with
Fall off the wagon - take up a bad habit/vice once again
Fall short - be shortof, or not have sufficient; not reach intended target/market/goal
Fall from grace - lose favor or popular status; act in a way that loses respect of others
Fall behind - lag, tarry to the rear; slip backwards; or... the expansion of the gluteous maximus from too much sitting around after Thanksgiving.....

Happy TT

The passion found among the grief

You know the old saying that Fact is Stranger than Fiction.... Not so much as stranger in this case more a parallel to it.
On going through an old metal box(yep, black painted metal old file lock box) I came across some letters (no, they weren't tied up together with a faded ribbon).
One was a small note written to my maternal great grandmother by her eldest son, Jason, as he left New Zealand for the Boer War, to "The Mother of his heart"- a hard working mother who nursed her invalid miner husband and cared for their 13 (yep thirteen surviving) children. He returned, fought with my grandfather on the Somme and came back from that.
The other a card sent to my grandmother by my grandfather from the Somme. They really did say... "Tomorrow we go over the top again, Jason and Tom are with me." (Sadly, Tom didn't return from over the top. I can still remember the sadness in my grandfather's eyes when he spoke of Tom.)
There was also a poem written in copperplate writing to my paternal grandmother from an admirer on the announcement of her "intention to marry" to my grandfather.
" Oh, the heartfelt sorrow knowing I shall not gaze upon your face
As you sit across from me at morning grace
For no grace can find the words to honor your beauty
Or mirror the depths of despair within my soul"

Tissues anyone?

"Hello God? What have you done with my mother?"

Hi to those of you popping back to see if I am back and functioning. I am but on different levels at present as I am coping with being robbed of my mother.
Since I last blogged, my sister and I have been to Atlantic Canada and New Zealand.
Sadly our mother who four months ago was independent and fully functioning has had to be put into full hospital care. The cruel thing about all this is that she had no stroke, no heart attack, no debilitating illness, only a fall in which she broke her arm and fully recovered from.
So the laughing, loving mother I left in June, who at 86 was driving her own car, cooking, gardening, and caring for herself and taking an active interest in life is gone, leaving a little wizened, vague, fully dependent person in her place. After her fall it was like she folded her wings and surrendered her old life. Depression and mild dementia, and physical frailty are the medical diagnosis. Only one of which can be treated.

Sadly, another cruel twist that fate has in store for her are lucid moments. This is when her condition distresses her, panic attacks set in and she needs constant reassurance that we will leave her where she is and not make her go home. The up side here is that she loves where she is and the people caring for her. The down side, she gets upset that my brother (who lives in Australia) and I haven't been to see her. She doesn't recall either of us being there with her. Or the visit of one of my daughters and her great grandson. Luckily I had the forethought to take photos of us all with her and stuck them on her wardrobe door so she can see we were all there.

It is very distressing being told she will never return to any resemblence of her old life , then having to go into her lovely home and dismantle a life time of her memories.

My advice, for what it is worth, is make sure you enjoy what time you have with your parents. Ring them today and tell them you are thinking of them and how much you love them and appreciate what they have done for you. Tomorrow might be too late.

up and away one way or another

My sister, who lives in New Zealand, arrives tonight after being out in the wilderness tracking grizzly bears and riding the transcanadian rail across the country leading up to our first trip ever away together. We booked it over a year ago, planning times etc that suit our respective commitments, we were so looking forward to it, but I have just learned that our mother who has been unwell for a while is now in hospital for assessment. Our brother, who lives in Australia, is with her .... next post could be from down under or Quebec...

PPP TT deals with Poisons

One of the things I enjoy most as a writer is learning about 'stuff' that isn't in my everyday existence. I'm working on a book where poisons play a big part.... so I'm going to bore...oops share with you some of my findings.

1. Poisons are rated in terms of toxicity for the oral lethal dose for 150lb human.- 6 most lethal (less than 5mg, seven drops) to 1 the almost non toxic (requires 15 mg,1 quart or 2.2pounds of the stuff).
   
2. Most poisons have a bitter taste -those that don't- have no survivors to tell us.
3. Arsenic (5) is as toxic as rubbing alcohol containing Isopropanol (5)
4. Strychnine and Cyanide (6) are as fatal as a sting from an Australian box jellyfish - death in minutes
   
5. Snake and spider bite toxicity are exacerbated if the bite site is vascular.
6. Age, health, lifestyle of victim affects uptake, and symptoms and time to die
7. Tear Gas while toxic/harmful is not considered a poison (it only causes 2nd degree burns - lungs, eyes, etc painful, but it won't kill you.)
8. New Zealand, Antarctica, Southern Chile and Southern Argentina are the only places in the world you wont find scorpions.
9. First written records of poisoning are from the Roman Empire around the time of Christ - Summerians, Indians, Chinese, Greeks and Egyptians had already perfected the art of poisoning.
10. Cleopatra didn't like using henbane, belladonna - it caused too much pain in her slaves and prisoners when she tried it out. Strychnine left convulsed victims grossly distorted so she settled on the cobra/asp - a serene prompt death.
11. 2C B.C. Greek king Mithradates VI ingested a minute does of every poison hoping to build up an immunity - he died. This increased small doses to build immunity is not uncommon in many cultures and has been used in fiction by Dorothy L Sayers (Strong Poison). and Alexander Dumas (The Count of Monte Cristo)
12. Macabre I know, but history's notorious poisoners and study of poisons gave birth to modern pharmacology - without it we wouldn't have digitalis, ouabain, atropine, aspirin.
13. 'Venin de crapaud' is made by feeding arsenic to, say, toads and when they die the juices are distilled from their bodies.

Have a great day but maybe you should watch what you eat, drink, step on, inhale, rub upagainst, touch..... maybe just go back to bed with a good book!

Tangled Tuesday

Sadly my Mum is failing. You know how you dream of having a day in bed, writing, reading, sex...
Mum doesn't seem to want to do anything now but lie in bed and stare at the wall... Sort of makes a day in bed less appealing now.
Old age is a bummer.

Smoking Hot.

I'm going like a train at the moment and dread having to stop for mundane things like... life.

Brain Storm

Had a brainstorm for my Hero and Heroine in the wee small hours
No time for blog --- gotta go gotta write!

TT - Thirteen Ways to detect a witch in 1486.

Okay - lets get this straight - these were used to identify witches during the Inquisition as set out in 1486's Malleus Malleficarum - the Witch Hunters Manual a book in three parts - one- explains who dangerous witches were, and how evil. The second - types of witches and what they did usually deviant sexual practices and luring men to have sex with them. Third part was ways to 'legally' convict them of witchcraft.
It heralded the beginning of the Inquisition at it most terrifying. The last English witch trial was held and repealed in 1736
Please note - no offense is intended to any Wiccans, Pagans or Religious groups.

1. The Devil's Mark : scar, mole, birthmark. mole, wart, pimple, pockmark, cyst, liver spot, wen, insect bite, ulcer, blemish. If nothing is visible the witch was "pricked" (people were employed as Prickers) all over to search for an insensitive spot where the devil had given his blinding kiss.
2. talking to oneself or animals or being overly attached to an animal.
   
3. keeping a black animal - cat or lamb in particular
   
4. spinning around
5. freckles, red hair, odd eyes. Blue and brown you're a gonner.
6. The Witch of Newberry was executed for surfing on a board in the river.according to Allan Maurer and Renne Wright -
7. trail by fire - if you didn't burn holding red-hot irons you were innocent
8. trail by water -"swimming the witch" the innocent sank
   
9. physical impediment such as old, wrinkled, deformed, pale, too skinny, lame
10. any unusual behaviour that followed in the wake of calamities, illness (like getting better or go mad with grief)
    
11. "weighing the witch" - guilty if she weighed less than the massive tombs of the day
12. healing - anything from a septic cut to something that would normally be fatal
13. Money/religion - witnesses could be bribed to say an enemy was a witch and anyone who seemed to be a threat to the Church would soon be accused of witchcraft.
    

Basically anyone outside society's perception of normal for those times. It was easier to accuse someone of being a witch, than to prove you weren't. These people obviously hadn't heard of the Wiccan Crede in which it states: "For what you send out returns to thee times three. "

Sources: The Writer's Complete Fantasy Reference, Writers Digest Books 1998
Complete Idiot's Guide to Wicca and Witchcraft (2nd Ed) Denise Zimmerman & Katherine A. Gleason Alpha Books 2003

Baseball

Went to my first ever baseball game yesterday - Blue Jays vs Yankees.... sitting up in the nosebleed seats (oops 500's) under the baking sun as the roof of the skydome was open, Wow! I am hooked, and want to go again, even if the Blue Jays lost 5-4 and hot dogs and soft drinks are way overpriced. I think that was my first hotdog this season too. Man they are so not good for the diet!

Success is hard work.

In Dallas at the RWA National, I was with a group of multi published author friends who were moaning about their work loads... yeah like I should be so lucky.... anyway they were envious (to a point) of my unpub status... Enjoy it they said, you can write what and when you feel like it, you have no constraints, no public ready to pounce on something that they feel should not be. If you are unpub and have finished a manuscript and started another, you have success. So many don't get to type - The End. That in itself is success...
It got me thinking about success and here is what a few others think of it.

• (On being congratulated on a Competition win) It is always encouraging to receive a compliment - Brenda Novak (author)

• I work really hard - Tiger Woods (golfer)

• The only place success comes before work is in the dictionary - Vidal Sassoon (hairdresser)

• Success can be wracking and reproachful, to you and those close to you. It can entangle you with legends that are consuming and all but impossible to live up to. - Gordon Parks (photographer film director)

• What separates the talented individual from the successful one is a lot of hard work. - Stephen King (author)

• In all things, success depends upon previous preparation, and without such preparation there is sure to be failure. - Confucius (Chinese philospher and ethics teacher)

• '-be happy but not satisfied' - Sensei David Kovar (6th degree black belt)

• Getting there is only part of the challenge, it is how you deal with it that determines whether success continues - Anon

• (on how to write a successful novel) - There are three rules for writing a novel. Unfortunately, no one knows what they are. - Somerset Maugham.

• Success is counted sweetest, by those who ne'er succeed
• To comprehend a nectar, requires sorest need. - Emily Dickinson (poet)
  

Guess it is back to the grind... and I'll take a leave out of Rita Mae Brown's book and - "pray for chance magnificence."

13 Facts and Fallacies about health and diet!

1.Diet soft drinks can help you lose weight!
Only if you are substituting real sugar sodas for diet (save 100 cal approx)
NB: Rats fed artificial sweetners craved more calories than rats fed real sugar.


2. Eating late at night in unhealthy and makes you fat and lead to a poor nights sleep!

• Fallacy it will only make you feel ill if you aren't used to it and consume more calories than you will burn off in the next 24 hours. Fallacy - There is no evidence to support that going to sleep on a full stomach, or the time of eating, leads to a worse nights sleep, unless of course you are not used to it.

3.Calories consumed after 6pm lead to sleepless nights and make you fat!

• Fallacy - There is no evidence to support that calories consumed later in the day hang around. It is how often you consume these large amounts of calories not the time they are consumed that lead to fat deposits. Calories consumed late in the evening can have a beneficial affect on sleep - take hot chocolate for instance, or a glass of red wine.

4. Commercially prepared children's food are geared to their needs.

• only 'beginner' baby foods like simple pureed fruits and vegetables that have no salt or sugar added.
• Most commercial foods targeted to children are sweetened, contain artificial colors, flavors and bright appealing packaging. None of which are to do with the 'needs' of young children. Many 'regular adult foods containing less sugar and fewer additivies are far healthier.
  

5. When you go a long time with little food your stomach shrinks.

• Fallacy. The stomach never shrinks it only enlarges to accommodate large portions of food then returns to its previous size. However the entire digestive tract can be overtaxed and overworked if it is only used to small portions and is suddenly called on to deal with a larger quantity. In stomach stapling for extreme obesity - the original (empty) size of the stomach is stapled so it wont accommodate as much food.

6. Adding salt to cooking vegetables keeps their colors bright.

• Fallacy. Salt has no effect on the color of vegetables. Waters acidity and mineral content contribute to the molecular changes n vegetables and often affects their color. NB: Plunging vegetable into ice cold water after blanching will help them retain their color.

7. Searing meat seals in the juices.

• Fallacy. Tests prove that seared meat and unseared meat have about the same amount of juice. Searing does however gives it better flavor due to the protein and sugar reaction to heat.

8. Cooking time for roast meat depends on its weight

• Although weight is important the shape also affects the amount of time it takes the heat to reach the center of the roast thus affecting cooking time.

9. Alcohol evaporates during cooking.

• It does evaporate faster than water but not all of it evaporates when cooked. e.g. something cooked in alcohol for 2 1/2 hrs will retain 5% alcohol, a flambe however retains 85%.

10. You can't deep fry in olive oil.

• You can but it does smoke faster(375F/191C) than other oils. It works fine in a deep fryer and gives food flavor however it is a lot more expensive than other oils.

11. Water is better than milk in an omelet.

• It might be healthier but tests have proved that an omelet made with milk is softer, fluffier and has more flavor.

12. The highest levels of Vitamin C are found in lemons.

• Fallacy - per 100gms, the Barbados cherries are the highest with 3,ooomgs, then rosehips with 2,800mgs and sea buckthorn 1,200mgs. Fruits such as blackcurrants 190mgs, kiwi 100mgs; green cabbage 105mgs; and red peppers 100mgs. Oranges and lemons only contain 40-50 mgs.

13. The smell of strawberries is made from --well, strawberries.

• Fallacy - the so-called fruit aromas are produced by bacteria and fungi.

Another load of useless info for you thanks the the Health and Diet section of: 1,000 Common Delusions and the real facts behind them by Christa Poppelmann, Firefly Books, 2006.

One of Those Wordless Wednesday

One BIG Start and 3 BIG finishes.

BIG START :- On this day 1954 - Elvis Presley made his professional debut as opening act for Slim Whitman. (Did you know that July -August are the biggest months for Elvis sightings since his death)
BIG FINISHES :- On this day 1968 - The Beatles closed their Apple Boutique on Baker Street, London UK, and gave away the contents.
1948 - UK bread rationing ended at 12 midnight (All food rationing ended in Britain on July 3 1954)
1974- Last day of presentation of the three articles of impeachment adopted by Judiciary Committee of the House of Representatives against President Nixon

Okay, so I have a brain full of garbage....

Did you know?

That today 29 July 1588 Sir Francis Drake looked up from a game of bowls to see the Spanish Armada in the English Channel and declared that he had enough time to finish the game before defeating the Spanish....
Also today in history poor tortured Van Gogh shot himself...

The Moon Swallowers is coming along in leaps and bounds after the Muskoka Novel Marathon up to page 180 now.
Gorgeous gorgeous day here so out on back deck making the most of it.. have great day.

Fact or Fallacy TT ###???

1. The Human Body is completely renewed every 7 years. - fallacy while the body is always changing each part changes at a different pace, and the entire body doesn't change completely.
2. Humans only have 5 senses - Fact now a fallacy - sight, touch, smell, taste and hearing are now part of the the basic list that is being expanded to include, balance, pain, hunger, thirst, temperature - all things we have no control over that contribute to our experience of our surroundings.
3. Contortionists are doubled jointed - Fallacy - they have very loose ligaments and work hard to make then stretch to perform the way they want.
4. On the side of you head are your ears - Fallacy they are called 'pinnas'. The ear is an internal organ made up of inner, middle and outer ear.- Pinnas are cartilage and do nothing if they were to enhance sound they would have to be a s big as the palm of your hand.
5. The bosom is the female breast. - Fallacy - it refers to the breast, chest area of man woman or child. (it's use is oldfashioned)
6. All babies are born with blue eyes. - Only Caucuasian babies because not much melanin pigment has accumulated giving the appearance of blue eyes, this increases over the first three months of life and the eye color changes. All colors are based on the same pigment and differ due to the number of pigment cells and how they refract light. Dark-skinned babies usually have dark eyes.
7. Twins cannot have two different fathers. -Fallacy - 1996 a set of twins was born in England one light skinned the other dark and they were conceived many days apart. Several other cases have been reported and fraternal (two-egg) twins with different fathers. the interval between conception has amounted to as much as four weeks.
8. Breathing through the skin is vital for life - Fallacy - we only breath 1% of our air through our skin, if you were to be covered in gold paint from head to foot - aka 1994's Gold finger you would develop a fever as the body wouldn't be able to cool itself because it wouldn't be able to sweat.
9. Hair grays with age. - fallacy - there is no such thing as gray hair. It has a gray appearance due to it's lack of color pigment and reflection of light.
10. After death nails and hair continue to grow. - Fallacy - when your dead, you are dead As moisture leaves the body, the body shrinks making nails and face stubble appear.
11. A person's hair can turn white overnight - Fallacy - to do so it would have to contain nerves. Only newly grown hair can turn white.
12. Yawning increases flow of oxygen to the brain - Fallacy - if anything it makes a person take in less.
13. Charles Darwin (1809-1882) proposed the Theory of Evolution - Fallacy - He preferred to describe his theory as "descent with modification" of "natural selection". Victorians however liked to think of humans having a more orderly progression of development and over time it became known as The Theory of Evolution.

(Taken and adapted from: '1,000 Common Delusions and the real facts behind them - Christa Poppelmann, Firefly books, 2006)

Boggle Brain

Having spent 72 hours writing in the Muskoka Novel Marathon you would have thought I would be ready to sleep the next few days away... Wrong! Brain in overdrive, system coming down off caffeine overload, shoulders in spasm, and eyeballs resting on my keyboard I'm finding it hard to shut down. That is why I'm posting this at 3:15 am.

Thursday 13 #????

Okay so I've been slack! Here goes.
Thirteen things that happened on this day

1. 1848 - Seneca Falls, Finger Lakes NY state - 250 women and 40 men met under the leadership of ELizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott to discuss women's grievances including the right for women to vote in the USA (women could stand for election since 1788)
   
2. 1374 - Italian Poet Petrarch dies near Padua- famed for his poem To Laura. Said to be the scholar who paved the way for the Renaissance.
3. 1799 - The Rosetta Stone was found by the French in Egypt. (takes its name from the harbor in which it was found)
   
4. 1834 - French painter and sculptor Edgar Degas was born.
5. 1870 - Napoleon III declares war to start the Franco-Prussian War (lasted into 1871)
6. 1930 - Maurice Garin wins the first Tour De France
7. 1817 - Readers of Jane Austen begin to mourn her death (the day before)
8. 1861 - Confederate troops look about to secure victory at Bull Run dashing Federal hopes of an easy victory.
9. 1942 - RAF continues it daylight raids on the Ruhr
10. 1944 - Von Staffenberg makes bomb for 'Valkyrie' conspiracy, set for the following day to assasinate Hitler
11. 1944 - The rumors begin about bread rationing in Britain ( goes into effect 22 July)
12. 1954 - The second day of the Four-Power COnference in Geneva (Eisenhower, Eden, Faure, Bulganin) the first meeting of heads of power since Potsdam 1945)
13. AD 64 - Nero watches Rome burn and orders his troops to fire on the city. He did not fiddle as it burned but watched from the Tower of Maecenas then put on an actors costume and sang his own composition 'The Sack of Ilium'.
    

(Thanks to W.B. Marsh & Bruce Carrick - Great stories from History 365 for everyday of the year, Pears Encyclopedia, 1977-1978, and my High School History teachers)