I’ve seen people on email lists and blog sites complain because they don’t get comments on their posts. Goodness knows I’m guilty of reading blogs and not commenting. The only blog I comment on regularly is FatalFoodies, because I post there myself and want other people to comment on my posts, self-serving back-scratcher that I am.

So here I am, back in town. I’m becoming addicted to high-speed internet. If I could get my husband to start jonesing for it, too (Is that term out of style now? If people my age are using it, it probably is), we might get it at home. But then what excuse could I have to hitch up the buckboard and drive into town? I’d have to collect a raft of errands to justify it. Love the luxury of being at the library (or the coffee shop) with the sound of traffic all around and folks wandering in and out of my view. One of the many nice things about living in a small town is how often you see people you know–and usually like–anywhere you go.

Fatal Foodies is having an open mic night tonight. I’ll be accessing it on my dial-up, which disconnects itself erratically, so it’s liable to be spotty for me, at best. It used to happen when I went to chats with the Patrick Bauchau fans, and I would return and be advised to fasten myself onto the list with duct tape. Didn’t work.

Although no one reads this blog–and why should anyone read it–it’s BORING–I’m going to post a writing exercise, just in case anybody stumbles in by accident and actually reads this far:

You are sitting in the library and someone passes the window. You’re working on your laptop, which is plugged into the wall socket. The door is at the other end of the building. The person who passes is going away from the door. This is someone from your past, someone you never thought you would see again, someone you very much want or need to speak to. Who is it, what’s the backstory, what do you do?

I came into town and met our #3 daughter–well, when I say “town”, I mean this small town. It isn’t what we used to call a “one-horse” town, it’s way too cool for that, but it’s really small. It was sort of a 1 1/2 horse town, but then somebody opened a coffee house with live entertainment and free wi-fi access, so now it’s more 1 3/4.

Anyway, I have another meeting to go to later, and I didn’t want to drive in from the country, drive back home and drive out again, so I made a sammich and I’m sitting in the coffee shop eating it and drinking Peach Mango Fuze (mmmmmmm….) and contemplating a cream cheese cranberry muffin as big as my head. Tough life.

I’m blogging on a group blog called Fatal Foodies. We write about mysteries and food, not necessarily in that order of importance. We’re having an “open mic” night on Tuesday, July 15 at 8:45pm Eastern time and giving away books to the first four guests.

I finished my ghost story. It’s called Elinir, and it’ll be in the Southern Indiana Writers’ SPIRITS ON THE SQUARE–AND ELSEWHERE anthology, out by this October. I’m taking it to the meeting tonight to read for critique. Pray for me.

Oh!–I made a store at CafePress! I write a tiny little flash fiction story every month for my web site, and I put a year’s worth together and put them on the back of shirts. And on a barbeque apron, tote bags and a mouse pad. it’s at the MA’s Flashbacks 2007 store. Wheeee!

I am so darned lazy, it’s pitiful. I haven’t been entirely indolent, though–I’ve been working on a ghost story for the Southern Indiana Writers’ anthology we’re doing for Corydon’s 200th birthday. It’s called SPIRITS ON THE SQUARE–AND ELSEWHERE, and features ghost stories set at local landmarks around the town square and, as the name implies, other places in town and in Harrison County (Indiana). It’s been very hard to write this story, because it’s written around a fire that only happened in 2000, in which a friend of my youngest daughter died. She tells me her understanding of the man would be that he would like having a story written about him, but it’s very hard. It’s one of those stories I feel called to write, though. I don’t have many of them, but this is one.

The weather has been weird around here. It’s been cooler than usual and wetter than usual. It’s been like an English spring. Not even terribly humid, most days. The flowers have been spectacular.

This is growing up my mother’s porch. It’s been like living in an arboretum! We’re starting to get cucumbers and tomatoes from the garden, and the herbs are delivering like crazy. I’ll be processing pesto for the winter before I know it!

I had a great time last week, on what I hope will be the first of many Sequential Writer Conventions. I had several fellow writers I wanted to visit with in a nearby town, but we each wanted to visit by twos or threes, or couldn’t get our schedules together. Rather than spend a billion bucks in gas making multiple trips, I scheduled myself around everybody else’s doings and made a two-day loop. Went Wednesday and met with friend A, then spent the night with my daughter (also a writer). The next day, my daughter and I met with writer B, then daughter and I and her husband (ALSO a writer) visited for a while, then I met writer C for coffee and came home. It took very little more gas than it would have taken to drive to my daughter’s and back. Cool!

Saturday, most of the Southern Indiana Writers Group carpooled to Nashville, Indiana, to have our pictures taken at Yesteryear Tintypes. Our 2008 anthology is called MOST WANTED, about crimes and desires, and we had our pictures taken looking like a bunch of wild west hard types. What a blast!

There’s nothing like spending time with fellow enthusiasts, no matter what your enthusiasm might happen to be. It’s even headier when your enthusiasm is as solitary an enterprise as writing is. Sometimes you just really need to get with other writers and talk story or exchange challenges and triumphs or give and get pointers. Even a short visit can be refreshing and recharging.

Memorial Day is coming up, and it’s our turn to host The Big Family. My husband’s brothers and sisters and their kids and THEIR kids and in-laws and Significant Others get together just about every month. Well, the brothers and sisters and in-laws get together every month, but about half the time it’s only us old folks and the rest of the time it’s The Big Family. The Brothers And Sisters take turns hosting and our number is up.

The host always makes bean soup and cornbread, and we always also have sliced ham and party buns and storebought fried chicken. Everybody brings something, usually the same thing every time. Marilyn brings green beans, Connie brings seven-layer salad, Barbara brings broccoli casserole, Terri brings That Eclaire Thing. With six in the first generation, we sometimes end up with over thirty people, especially if friends come along. It’s supposed to be pretty this year, so some people can sit outside. The pictures I have in my Flikr sidebar are mostly of our yard (not the bench and the weeping cherry–that’s in back of the library in Corydon, Indiana), so it’s plain we have plenty of room, if folks can go on the porch. It gets pretty squinchy if we all have to stay indoors.

Mrs. Allen, my husband’s late mother, always held open house on Sundays, and everybody was afraid they’d drift apart when she passed on, but they’ve kept up the monthly get-togethers. She would be so proud to know they’ve stayed so close.

On the Extreme Makeover–My House Edition front, the kitchen is just about done. Charlie repainted the cabinets a soft sage and we’ve ordered handles for the cabinet drawers. I found some shaped like grape leaves with pull rings on them, and Charlie liked them in brushed black, so that’s what we ordered. We got valences in green and off-white stripes and it really dresses the room up. We thought it might clash with the stripes on the wallpaper, but they complement each other. Same thing in the front room. We got (jackard?) curtains in blue-green and burgundy paisley on off-white, and I was worried (well, not WORRIED–there are real things to WORRY about) that the pattern would grate with the floral couch and the geometric rockers, but they colors all pick each other up and the patterns all cozy up to each other.

Why am I writing about this? Who cares about this? <sigh> Blogging is weird. This is like writing one of those generic holiday newsletters to send out to a bazillion people you never contact personally. What a boring blog!

Not actual CONSTRUCTION this time.  My husband is re-doing the kitchen, so I’ve had ladders, buckets of drywall finishing mud and miles of plastic dropcloths all over the kitchen this week.  He took down the ceiling fan/light and the two other light fixtures and replaced all three with fluorescent disks that look like they came off a space ship.  Cool!  The kitchen was yellow with white trim and now it’s a soft green with a shade darker green trim.  The cabinets are looking scruffy, so he’s going to paint them the trim color and our #1 daughter is going to paint ivy leaves on them.

I am dancing all around in delight, but cooking has been a challenge.

I’ve dodged it as much as possible by just doing cereal and soup, leftovers and carry-in–ha!  Those pre-cooked rotisserie chickens they have at the grocery store are SUPER!  I take the meat off the bone as soon as I get the carcass home and put the bones and icky stuff aside to boil for soup.  I put the meat in a container to pull out for sandwiches.  This week, it’s been great to have the cooked chicken because I’ve gotten by a couple of days with chicken salads.

My husband’s late mother used to make a delicious chicken salad with cubed cooked chicken, celery, onion, mayonnaise, halved grapes and chopped pecans.  We had that a couple of meals, and enjoyed both the food and the memories of a dear lady.

I finally got a picture of those wild turkeys:

This is all the closer I could get to them. The INSTANT my hand TOUCHED the doorknob, the turkeys all flew down into the woods. They look kind of like peahens, don’t they?

I’ve also been mushrooming. Morels are the only ones I know by sight, so they’re the only ones I gather. This has been a good year for them.

I usually just braise them in butter but, if I don’t get many, I flour them and fry them in oil. It’s all good!

It’s been a strange spring–snow in the sunshine, rain and sleet mixed, thunder during a snowstorm.  On Easter, we had blizzard conditions mixed with bright sunshine.  Something for everyone, I guess.

I’m a little sad, since I lost a couple of friends I’d been out of touch with for a while.  It made me think of other friends I’ve lost contact with.  You would think that losing someone you hadn’t seen for a while wouldn’t matter much, but it’s like all the missed years hit you all at once–all the moments and laughs and trials you didn’t get to share.

Ah, well, nothing to be done about some of it, but it makes me treasure all the more the friends I DO keep up with.

The vernal equinox has passed and the days are getting longer.  Can fresh asparagus and wild mushrooms be far behind?

I looked out the front window and there was a flock of about a dozen wild turkeys pecking around in the front yard.  In case you’ve never seen wild turkeys, they look about as much like domestic turkeys as Johnny Depp looks like John Candy.  Wild turkeys look like Amish peacocks.  They must have heard me squeal because they took off into the trees.  Wild turkeys are very wily and skittish and they take off like bats out of hell.  Never mind the occasional glimpse of Bambi–it’s seeing these guys every so often that makes living here a Wild Kingdom treat.  I would post a picture, but the rascals flew away before I could snap them.

Long time, no post. That’s because after I successfully installed and configured Linux Mandriva 2008 for myself and my husband, and after I took the case to the house of a friend with high speed internet so I could download all the updates and bug fixes, I… I… well, I was uninstalling programs we don’t use and I… I nuked a bunch of the files that make the OS run. I even nuked something that makes it possible to reinstall important programs. So there was nothing to do but to reinstall and take the case over to the friend’s again and download the updates and fixes…again. What a maroon.

And did I learn anything? Probably not. My next busy-bee project is to figure out how to include a Windows drive in the configuration. I may be making another trip to my friend’s yet. Pride goeth before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall.

In other “news”, we’re snowed in AGAIN. No freezing rain this time, but over 12 inches of snow. The roads are in good shape, even our back country roads, but our driveway is 1000 feet of snow-packed gravel. Church was canceled, so here I am writing on my blog while the laundry dries. Ah, life is a constant whirl of incident and excitement.