Leptospirosis, Hurricanes, and Books, oh my!

This is a picture of the flooded Houston Temple taken by a Brother Boyd. When I find his first name, I'll post it.

I know. I haven't been here. In my mind, I've been rowing around Houston pulling people off of roofs. Maybe we actually SHOULD take our rowboat over there and help hurricane victims. I'd need new oars first, and a better car. And knees. But really just an offer. Barely even any arm-twisting. Can you get Leptospirosis from that water?

In reality the last two months have been crazy busy. We have a new Temple in town, which means we've been attending the cultural celebration, dedication, and visiting the new facility. It's a GORGEOUS place. More than that, it's a place of deep worship and unsurpassed peace. (It's not the one pictured above. That one is simply tying two thoughts together in a lovely way.)

Actually I don't come on this computer until after I've written all day, usually. I find it's much more productive to do that rather than sit for most of the day and rummage through other writers' newsletters telling me about their 15 new books and how I should join their million-chore extravaganza chucklecopter book giveaway. It greatly cuts down on my own productivity and ability to buy their books.

And what really bites my tail is when these authors decide to use something devastating like the flooding in Houston to sell their books. "I'm giving half my royalties from this book to the victims in Texas." My question is, how do they get their ten cents to where it needs to go? Also, I get my royalties quarterly if I'm rolling in luck. They must either have a better royalty system than I do, or they're just capitalizing on a horrid situation. If the last, I am disgusted by their mercenary practices. If the first, I bow jealously to a superior system.

I couldn't catch the clouds of hoppers that jittered up with every step I made.

The monsoon rains have made our random-generated pumpkin patch (leaves the size of dinner plates) explode, but have now gone away. I'd gladly take about a foot of Texas's water. I had to duct tape the hose back together to water the patch. Anywho, because of these giant leaves and succulent stalks, our yard is now full of grasshoppers. They're EVERYWHERE chomping into the stalks and hopping up my skirt or shirt. Bleah! And the pumpkins are dying off. I'd rather the grasshoppers die than our surprise pumpkins. (We toss our pumpkins off the roof and the spot near the wall is where we tossed the carnage.)

And on to a downward dog position. I'm on here in the morning to research Leptospirosis, a dog/human disease that kills dogs. You get it from dog or wild animal feces or urine. I'm petrified that my sweet dogeroo might have sniffed the wrong puddle. My dog pees on every vertical thing...sigh. I'm sure other dogs do that too. My oldest son kindly took our dog to the park where he loves to chase balls. And pee on things (the dog pees, not the boy). Now the dog is coughing a little bit, has some mild diarrhea, and seems depressed. I wonder how you take a dog's temperature. I'm guessing it's through his bung hole. I think I'd rather row around Houston. We might have to look into a vaccination. And a rowing vacation.

Welp. I'm off to write. And call a vet. And smash about a bazillion mosquitoes. The grasshoppers are a write off. Except I'm smashing the one that just jumped down my cleavage while taking the picture.

One Wizard's Treasure

Before you ask, I've had an excuse.

I finished writing SLIPSTREAM (cheers and dancing in the streets) and dug into EVERLOST with a vengeance (The first is sci fi and the second is a gamer-geek love story. I'm probably halfway through that one). 

But also there's this:

I was brought up to be clean and tidy. We had to have our beds made and everything in its place. There were consequences if we didn't respond to the PRODDING.

Segue to my married life. I have a lovely husband for whom decades-old dust bunnies older than some of his children don't bother him. Which can sort of be a good thing sometimes. But for a person brought up to clean clean clean, it's nerve-wracking. Picture a wizard sitting in his cobweb-draped (some of them occupied) study with open tomes splattered with candle wax, magic wands, animal skulls, a gargoyle or two, musical instruments, various other interesting objects, and thousands of books. He's also reading a computer magazine surrounded by computers in various forms of undress and viability. This wizard of mine can untie just about any Gordian knot of a problem, but if you touch his stuff, you'll find your hand resting on the floor next to your head.

So imagine my exquisite joy upon surveying the empty room of my recently married daughters. By empty, I mean still full of their extant things but evacuated. Slowly, like a glacier moving, I dealt with it all, moving this to move those things to move that. 

Next I went caving in my room, part of which hadn't seen a dust rag in decades. I found long-buried treasures (Yup. Forget about going for the lost treasure of the Sierra Madres and the lost Teton treasure. Found along with a plethora of single socks whose mates have languished forever in the sock basket) and a multitude of things we'd been looking for.

When I moved the bed, I found we'd had termites and they'd gotten into my school teaching supplies. ARGH! Luckily they had decided they were done and gone the way of the dodo, leaving no extant macaroni sculptures. Because of those, I went and got several plastic bins and loaded everything salvageable under my bed with room to spare. Now people actually realize there was a master bath in there somewhere...:) And it's no longer full of computer things.

I walk around my house several times a day, now, just exulting over the fact that I can see more than a couple of feet of carpet. I try to think up more things to say good-bye to or fix every day. 

I'm going to have a gar(b)age sale and the resultant money will go to sending my son on a mission. And the second reason is that I'm getting rid of loads of treasure (clutter) which I'd stockpiled in my living room for as long as I could stand it. Away go the bunk beds and shoe rack and some clothing, jewelry, roller skates, dolls, toys, electric pianos, and anything else I can get rid of, plus a few things I've been keeping in case of nuclear holocaust or something akin to it.

And there is a den filling with the wizard's paraphernalia. It's very tempting to go in and help him out by dusting or putting things away. But it's his, now, and it has a door with a lock. I don't have to obsess over whether the dust bunny civilization that lives there is going to rise up and strangle us all in our sleep. 

Now I just get to worry about the cupboards falling off my kitchen wall and the microwave that has a hole in the bottom of it that might or might not explode into a major fireball next time I use it.

Breathe. Just breathe and then go in and calloo over the vast emptiness that is our bed room.  And then get back to writing before the hubby gets home and I have to make dinner.