My New Favorite Things

(You gotta love a list!)

1. My Diaper Bag!!! Remember when I wanted this SO SO SO much for my birthday last month? Well, it finally arrived. It's bigger than I thought it would be, but I love it anyway. All of my stuff fits neatly inside, and the mommy pocket on the sides are roomy. PLUS . . . take a look inside . . . see that??? There are insulated bottle pockets. Great, because normally I have actual milk (if I bring a bottle somewhere) and not the powdered stuff. And it just looks and even feels so cool (uh, hello . . . quilted microfiber).


2. Rent
We saw this on Broadway during a trip in . . . oh, maybe 1999? I finally saw the movie this weekend. I had the same thoughts at the beginning of the movie. I didn't care for the music very much. But by the end, I was in love again. Now I can't get the songs out of my head.


3. Shelfari
What do you use to show off the books you're reading? I know some people do a monthly review of what they've read and others post a list in the sidebar. I once used Library Thing, but I found it buggy. Then I started listing them through an Amazon recommendations list in the sidebar, but it was a big hassle to add books to the list. So now I'm trying out Shelfari. So far I really like it. It's more of a social community (very similar to Library Thing), but you don't have to use those features. The widget is pretty cool. You can check mine out in the sidebar.
You can view my profile and the books on my shelf here:
http://www.shelfari.com/michelle-hulse
I'm not adding old books . . . just starting from where I am now.

Safe and Sound

In case you saw the news, we were not evacuated.

If you didn't see the news, about 3,000 in Lafayette were evacuated over the weekend due to a train derailment. A buttload of hydrochloric acid spilled out, and they shut down and evacuated a major portion of the city during the cleanup.

Go figure . . . we didn't watch the news Saturday morning, and it hadn't made it into the paper yet. So we took our happy butts down the interstate and could not figure out why we had to go to the next town and take back roads to get to the mall. Let's just say it's a good thing I have a standing policy to leave and HOUR before we need to be anywhere regardless of how long the drive is. You just never know the delays with kids. This time, we left on time, but it took us much longer to get there with all the rerouting.

Even with all of that, it turned out to be a very good weekend. We had the girls' pictures taken at JC Penney (the reason for the mall trip), and I think they turned out pretty well. Harper's a ham and Ella will never stop making goofy faces, but those are my kids.

Then we decided to take a stroll through the mall. Let me start by saying I can't remember the last time I was in the mall. I hate the mall. I would love it if it were filled with local shops . . . a bead store, maybe a nice specialty food & wine place, a locally owned book store . . . stuff like that. But no. It's all chain crap. And way too crowded. They need to add a second floor just so people can walk. And it isn't even a holiday shopping season. Anyway . . . I hate the mall, but Harper absolutely LOVED it. The people. She could people watch all day, and I love watching her light up like that. And I did manage to find a swimsuit for Ella (whoops - forgot she had swimming lessons next month and no suit that fit).

Next, we popped over to a book store (another chain piece of crap, but it had a good kid's section for Ella), then wandered around the strip mall next door. I found a couple of pieces of clothing for the girls, so the trip was not a wasted. Plus, there was virtually NO FIGHTING. By anyone. Ok, ok, so it took a bag of candy, a new book, and a handmade cloth lizard from World Market to keep her happy, but we did it. We even went to a local restaurant in Scott that we don't normally go to for dinner. On the way home we realized we spent an entire day away from home and we all survived. Mark your calendars, folks.


Uh . . . but no catch up writing. I'm just half a scene shy of finishing my first chapter. Since were so busy last week, I'm putting a lot of household stuff on hold and working on chapter 2. I should have something edited and ready to post by Friday.

Dodging Tornadoes

We made it through one round of spring tornadoes. Now we're just watching the river stages. It was this time four years ago that our house flooded. We had a new baby then, too. Something about us and new babies and weather that just doesn't sit well. And then, just when we get past the spring storms . . . it will be hurricane season.

Thankfully, we only lost power for half the day. Ella went to school since they had power, and I took Harper to my mom's. No damage, just a few big branches down. We were kind of in a hole, and there was serious destruction around us. The roof of the pediatrician's office building was ripped off. The Oil Center where the office is located looks like a bomb went off in the center of the area. Crossing our fingers that the kids don't get sick before the building is reopened, or it's emergency room visits for us.

I've come to a conclusion . . .

Some weeks just aren't made for writing.


A bit of good news is Harper slept for 5 1/2 hours Tuesday night! Party time! Too bad it didn't last. The increase in her Zantac seemed to help. Now, if I can just catch up this weekend, we'll be good to go.

I scheduled the girls for pictures tomorrow morning. Wish us luck, well need it!

Feeding My Muse: Photos

There are lots of uses for random, interesting photos. You can use images of real people as stand-ins for your characters. You can use images of objects to remind you of items in your story that have significance. Or if you don't have a clue as to what you're going to write next, you can keep a collection of photographs and browse through them whenever you need inspiration. You can randomly select one and sit down with it or post it somewhere until you find a use for it in your story.

So where do you get the photographs? My favorite was YotoPhoto, but it looks like they were shut down. At least temporarily. I think there were some legal issues with stolen images. (For clarification, I'm not looking for pictures to post on my sites or to use for anything other than inspiration. Cutouts on my whiteboard and bulletin board.) Recently, I discovered that Flickr has a new page that features what it considers interesting photos from the past week. There are pretty flowers and beaches and babies and . . . well, just . . . weirdness. Seriously, there's a naked guy on a ladder with an electric drill and a robot helmet. I don't know what criteria it uses, and I don't care. There's a reload button on the page, so I can take about five minutes and scan through quite a few photos. I don't think about them at all. I don't wonder how they will fit in my current project or any other project. I just save anything that catches my eye. Even if it's a naked guy on a ladder with an electric drill and a robot helmet.

Now, the problem with Flickr is that people can post their photos and make them unavailable. So not every photo has a download button. And don't even think about right-clicking to save it. You'll just get a blank file called "spaceballs" or some crap like that on your computer.

But there's a trick . . .

IF you have a mac, you can take a screenshot of the image you like (command-shift-3 for the whole screen or command-shift-4 to drag a select box to just take a screenshot of what you select). It gets saved as a .jpg on your desktop and voila! You have your image. I don't know if there is a similar feature for pc. I never had the need when I used them, but I have to say it's a pretty darn cool feature.

I come up with quite a few ideas this way. Mostly just the details that fill in the little cracks in my story, or provide all of those lovely little character details that make people seem alive and fallible and, well, human. It's a quick five minute writing exercise that's great for visual people and is well worth the small investment of time.
Even if you don't collage.
Even if you just keep your photos in a binder labeled "inspiration."
Even if all you get is a naked robot.

Gimmie!

I want these closets:

Dollar Store Closets


Looks easy enough. Why doesn't my house look like that? *sigh*
I could spend all day looking at the pretty organizing stuff. But I won't.

Instead I'm getting a jump on all the stuff I said I would do this week:

1. Add new scenes to finish chapter 1 of L&F.
2. Get some sleep. This applies to everyone here.
   
3. Finish messing with the color scheme on this site. (Still not sure about this green yet . . .)
4. Get Ella signed up or swimming lessons. Sounds easy enough, but it's been a ridiculous comedy of errors.
5. Get out of the house. It's a busy week. Let's hope I get #2 done or #5 will be a disaster!
   

Happy Mother's Day

Happy Mother's Day!

I had more to say, but I got pooped on . . .

WIP Friday

Amy's blog has reminded me that I should be posting excerpts again and bring back WIP Fridays. That's not happening this week, but I'll let you in on what I am working on and what to look out for soon.

1.) New Novel
Hey look! it's a new progress meter in the sidebar. Not keeping that title. But it'll do for now. We'll call it L&F in posts from now on. Keeping up with it by taking five-ten minute breaks to write while the baby plays/fusses, and it's working better than I thought it would. It keeps the story in my head so I can just pick up and start writing. Much better than, say, an hour once a day where I spend the first fifteen minutes figuring out where I left off and what the heck comes next. The beginning is a mess right now, as I'm trying to solidify each character's voice, but I'll post some excerpts in the next couple of weeks.

2.) New Blog Look
Blogger psycho. Working on those colors when I can. I just haven't settled on a background color yet.

3.) Naps
I'm trying to get Harper on some sort of a nap schedule. Ok, I'm just trying to get her to take naps. Some sort of regularity would be a bonus. Actually napping in her crib would be a miracle. This morning I put her down and she only napped ten minutes. This afternoon she finally fell asleep a 2:45 (I held her) only to wake up to Ella's screaming thirty minutes later. The kid was playing, but still. No breaks for mommy. Mommy is very very drained. I think it's called "touched out."

I think I have other projects I'm working on, but the sleep deprivation won't let me remember them.