Day 1 Poem--Beaver Tale

April is National Poetry Month! Every day a new poem. Today's example is a Pensee poem. If you want to know what that is, go here:

This is my Pensee Poem for today:

Beaver Tale

Beaver

Flat tail, fuzzy

Chewing through tree trunks all day

You are always so dam busy.

Thanks for the swimming hole.
© 2014 by H. Linn Murphy

Bluebonnets and Sharks

I Love to travel.

We recently made the snap decision to go to Texas to see the daughter and her family for Spring Break. We needed a snortle fix (a combination of snort and chortle unique to the grandson). By snap I mean we decided Tuesday night and left Wednesday morning, unheard of in the Murphy house. Strangely, we didn't leave any more items than had we planned the crud out of it. I count it as a successful foray. The Murphys have done Texas.

I like to make a journal entry when we do these trips. I've gotten away from doing regular journal entries because I don't get off on detailing what we ate for dinner. My life is fairly staid except for these little expeditions away from home. I should get back to it, though, because I tend to forget what I'm spending the golden coin of my youth on.

Well I didn't take my journal. So everything is written or drawn on the back of a grocery list. I'd just scan the whole thing in and put it on here but the kids broke our scanner. And I'd enter pictures, but I didn't get my new camera until my birthday, a few days after we got back.

So here is a list of what's on my little snatch of paper:

We saw these animals: went back and
deer (alive and dead), a bazillion cows of all sorts (including long horned), horses, sheep, goats, chickens, buffalo, dogs, cats, a turtle (which we nearly hit on the road), a dolphin (story to follow), herons, llamas, hermit crabs, skunks (dead), possums (also dead), and about a gazillion vultures (one of which was pecking at a dead deer and The Hubs took for a chicken).

These are the things to do next time that we missed this time:
*Visit NASA
*Go see the big crater
*Go to the Monogan Sandhills
*Houston Museum of Art
*Houston Aquarium
*Take the kids up to the top of one of those skyscrapers
*Pick a bluebonnet


In Texas there are LOADS of these things:
@cows
@oil wells
@vultures
@Texans...:o)
@lousy drivers (at least three of them nearly drove us off the freeway)
@damaged guardrails (drunk cowboys?)
@rundown towns
@graveyards
@wild flowers (sadly I didn't get to pick a single bluebonnet)
@trucks of all sorts
@Texas stars (yippee yie kie yay) (I want one, by the way)
@scraggly oak trees
@historical markers
@Texas flags (these people LOVE their state)

We saw a bathyscaphe (deep sea rover like Jacques Cousteau would use) going down the freeway on the back of a trailer. There were swales of bluebonnets. We saw all kinds of GIANT things like a golf ball, a skull, a squirrel, a huge red X, a buffalo, a blue bull, Yogi Bear, a huge muscular shrimp, and a spur. We passed the home of Lyndon B. Johnson and NASA and the last drive-in picture show. There was a driving range with school buses as the targets. There was a sign for Pancake, and two signs near each other reading Stink Creek and Sweetwater (we wondered how they cleaned up the water). Another sign read, "Deep Sh** Cattle Company." We passed Fort Hood and the Pyote Rattlesnake Bomber site. We also went to the world's nicest rest stop complete with what looked like a bank, vending machines, a museum with hands-on displays and a movie, a fantastic playground, a tornado hideout, and of course bathrooms.

One of those days we went down to Galveston to the beach. The sky was overcast and I expected the Gulf water to be cold. On the contrary it was about ten degrees warmer than the water at Moro Bay in CA. We donned our swimsuits and charged out into the murky green water, intent on body surfing as much as we could.
I found that I couldn't even see my feet, so I sent J back to get my goggles, hoping we could then navigate through the murk. No dice.
While she was gone B and I were looking back, anticipating the next Holy Monkey wave.

Then we saw it.

A huge black fin cut through the tube.
My heart jammed itself up into my esophagus and I heard B yelling, "That better not be a shark! That can't be a shark!"

All I could think of was, "NO NO NO!" Those fifteen or so hours of Shark Week programs flashed through my head. All of them said, "Don't go out in murky water." And there we stood not even able to spot our toes. I whipped my head around trying to keep that thing in sight and yanked out my hoop earring (which plummeted into the drink never to be found again). I didn't care. I was waiting for that first bump before the razor sharp teeth sliced into me. I was planning on how to punch it in the eyeball or the snout or get it to turn over on its back.

But then I squinted (no glasses=cruddy vision) and saw as the huge fish breached, that it was....

...a dolphin.

I was never so happy in my whole life.
And J was furious that she missed it. Go figure.
We collected The Hubs and his charge, the toddler bird-pursuer with his mouth-full of sand, the blue-lipped wave-hopper collectors of bits of shell and quarts of sand and hermit crabs, and headed back to civilization and BBQ.

I found I like Eastern Texas with its green pastures (probably because there is a hefty amount of humidity) and ubiquitous stars. I loved being with the family. Even the dog (who was definitely upset at being left home because he broke out of his kennel and peed, chewed, and knocked things over all over the place) was adorable.

All in all, Texas ROCKED.

How NOT to Pleat a Kilt

They're all wearing my colors but J is wearing the Stuart tartan as well.

How NOT to Pleat a Kilt
or
How to Go Loony in 3,756 Easy Steps

(Click here for a little walkin' around music.) Kiss me I'm Irish (as well as Scot) 

I've always wanted a kilt from our clan tartan. I'm just that way. The old Black Watch tartan is for people who really don't know who they are. I'm a McKusick (among other things). So when Granny went for a visit to Albain (Scotland) and asked me what I wanted, I told her (of course) a kilt.
She came back and handed me a doll saying, "Your kilt is $100/foot! It's not happening on my budget." Good-sized kilts generally run from six to nine yards.

I sighed and resigned myself to admiring my doll from the shelf, sure that I'd never afford it. Luck was with me, though. Our clan needed an editor-in-chief for the newspaper. I stepped up and boldly asked if my payment could be a kilt. "Aye!" the out-going editor said. They shipped me a bolt of luscious tartan cloth and the words, "ádh mór" (Good luck).

Those were prophetic words.

These are the directions I was working off of. For some reason they look much simpler when you aren't wrestling fabric and sewing in perfectly straight pleats.

After exhaustive web checks I finally got some sketchy directions. There should have been something entitled Pleating Kilts for Absolute Dolts. To me reverse box pleats meant about as much as "The homogeneous lamina which lies between the cardioid r=a(1+cos0) and the circle r=2a cos 0."

Naught.

Finally after my 3rd exhaustive treatise I decided I was ready to head into uiscí aisteach (uncharted waters) and cut into my precious $100/foot material. "It'll be grand," I thought. "They've been doin' this for centuries." Using the floor and several boxes of pins I pleated and pleated to my heart's content, my tongue out and my leanaí (children) jeering. 

You'd think these would be SIMPLE directions.

You have to be very precise about exactly where you set the pleat so that it shows the exact same part of the tartan every time. How deep you set the pleats is determined by how much material you have, how chubby (or not) you are and what part of the pattern you want to show most.

There are apparently very good reasons for the reverse box pleats (or double sett pleats) next to the aprons. At first I forgot about them and just did the regular pleats and the aprons. I even basted in the pleats on three different levels like the directions said to do. Then I held the thing up to me and it was ró-mhór (too big).

You have to understand that I never baste anything. Yeah. I'm a rebel. But this time I was going by the book if it killed me. So I pulled out the basting thread, took out every stinking pin, and reset it smaller. Again I basted everything, just sure it would be iontach (wonderful). I held it up and again it was fós ró-mhór (still too big).

By this time I was ready to find a claymore and somehow do myself in (very difficult to do with a sword that long). But I was chinneadh (determined) to get it right.

So I did it again. This time I tried to hold it up to me before I basted. The fit seemed right so the basting proceeded. It looked pretty good flat. I even sewed about six inches down each pleat to set the pleats. At the end of that grueling session I held my fantastic kilt up and it looked iontach. 

Then I put it on 

and it looked uafásach (horrible).

At this point I was ready to find a match and light the blasted thing. I realized that it needed the double sett pleats to make the aprons hang right. I'd already been dúr (stupid) and sewed the pleats in and sewed them to the waistband. 

So I picked out the edge pleats and inverted them. Now the aprons sat quite nicely. I sewed everything back in and patted myself on the back. The kilt was a

sárshaothar (masterpiece)! I did a little Slip Jig as I kilted myself up. Only to find that...

The uafásach thing was ró-bheag (too small).

I decided then and there that I was the one who would have to lose about three stone of ugly fat instead of re-doing the kilt. To this day I haven't redone it.

All the stinking pleats are in the back. You mostly only see apron. Yeah. Do-over.

But now I'm wavering. Reality is whacking me about the head and shoulders with a clue bat, saying, "Le do ghlúine a cheapann tú go bhfuil tú ag dul chun titim trí chloch? Tá tú ag ól an Kool-aid." (With your knees you think you're going to drop three stone? You've drunk the Kool-aid.)

It might be time to bow to reality and re-pleat the uafásach thing into something I'll look iontach in finally.

BLOODBORNE Review

 
I just finished BLOODBORNE by Gregg Luke. My hands are still shaking.

This book had me reading late into the night under the covers. Luke has all the greatest marks of a fantastic thriller. He doesn't bash you in the face with buckets of gore, bad language, and sex, which are hallmarks of too many of today's "thrillers."

What he does is subtly suggest something and lets your imagination run rampant. Which it does. All the ingredients are just outside our doors in real life, making the believability on this one high. Love the twists, the strong, intelligent heroine, the flawed but strong hero, and a villain I personally wanted to peg down and paint with honey. Mind control, secret societies, virology, and spy tactics all come into play in a delicious mix of terror, spotless research, and great writing. Luke knows his stuff. I can't think why this isn't a movie yet. It would sit nicely on a shelf with DA VINCI CODE.

The premise is spot on, chillingly so. Developing super viruses for use as continent-wide phage? Of course there are people out there who are intent on doing the same thing. As I read, I hoped that the villain's own vector would take him down, or one he contacted from the lake. That would be poetic justice. You'll have to read this book to see if I was right. You can get it here.

I lie in wait for that tiny shadow flitting and diving around my head, heralded by the telltale buzz.
SMACK!

HUBER HILL AND THE DEAD MAN'S TREASURE Review

HUBER HILL AND THE DEAD MAN'S TREASURE by B. K. Bostick

This book took off from scene one. Kids will love its fast-paced action and its believable characters.

Huber Hill is the scrawny guy everybody bullies in middle school. Especially Scott McCormick, who gives him probably the worst nickname ever. (I really hate that name and hate that poor Hubey never seems to shuck it off.) At first we really want Huber to kick ol' Scotty to the curb, but because Huber is a cool kid, they become best friends.

When it comes time to share the secrets Huber's dying grandfather has left him, he shares it all with Scott and his sister, Hannah. The trio go after treasure in the mountains, with the help of an old map, a notebook, and some old-fashioned sleuthing.

Unfortunately they aren't the only ones interested in the money. A creepy Spaniard shadows the three treasure hunters' every move, intent on beating them to the gold in a nail-biting race to the finish. He'll stop at nothing--not theft, not spying, not assault, or even murder to get what he wants. Luckily the kids have powerful forces on their side.

This was a fun, speedy read and fits on the shelves with the likes of Obert Skye's books and The Janitor. I gave this one 4 pizzas.

You can get this book here.

Honey Badger = Chuck Norris

I can kill you with my brain.

I've said before that my favorite animal is the hippopotamus. Granted that though hippopotami are chunky and they can kill you with their little toenails, they have sunk to second in my estimation.

The new fav animal? The honey badger. Everything else comes a distant third or more. "Why do you say this," you ask. Because those things can just about write their own ticket. I imagine in a few years they will be. Those critters are smarter than a first year college student.

Isn't he sweet?

The other day I saw a documentary about the little cusses. In spite of every effort by the studying scientists to keep them penned safely inside, the warts got out and raised Cain. Strains of Trashin' the Camp from the Tarzan cartoon ran through my head as I watched them empty the refrigerator and rubbish bin in the scientists' bungalow. They raided beehives, easily enduring thousands of stings. They rumbled with hyenas.

At one point they even burrowed into the lion enclosure and picked a fight with some lions. I've seen them take on full grown cobras, get bitten, pass out for a few minutes, and wake up a couple of minutes later to finish biting the head off the snake.

These bat-flappin' crazy animals are also known by their Afrikaans name: Ratel. Their scientific name is Mellivora capensis. They live natively in Africa, India, and Southeast Asia, mainly in dry, forested, or grassland areas. They are fantastic climbers and swimmers. They can live as long as a quarter of a century in captivity.

Come at me, loser.

These honeys are part of the weasel family and are related to skunks, weasels, ferrets, otters, and other kinds of badger. Like a skunk they have scent glands at the base of their tails for marking territory or if you scare the crud out of them, and are therefor a species of mustelid. Just noting that I don't want to meet that thing that can scare a honey badger in a dark alley. They are some of the most fearless animals on the planet.

Honey badgers stand about 9-12 inches tall at the shoulder, they're anywhere from 29 to 38 inches long with their tails being about 4 to 11 inches long. An adult male can weight from 19 to 35 pounds and a female 11 to 22. It's mostly black but has a wide gray-white stripe almost like a skunk that runs from the tip of its head to the end of its tail. It has wicked long claws great for digging or tearing things to pieces and a squat, strong body.

Say "Baby Bees."

You'd think that honey would be their favorite food with a name like honey badger. But what they really crave are the juicy bee larvae. They're rather like my son, though, and will eat almost anything that doesn't get away from them fast enough.

All these pictures look so warm and fuzzy.

These lovable fuzz balls (not) are generally nocturnal and hard to observe in their natural habitats. If they make their own burrows, they are around nine feet long and up to five feet high. They are perfectly fine with subletting from other animals, though. Who's going to tell them 'no'? You don't start a fight with a honey badger and expect to get the upper hand. With their strong skulls, loose skin, razor-sharp claws and nasty scent glands, you'd be completely insane. And shredded. If you hear their deep, ominous growl, you're in for a world of hurt.

Honey badger dads don't hang around. With a wife like that would you? In the six to eight weeks it takes her to have one or (rarely) two babies she could flay you alive for looking at her funny. By the time the little darlings are fourteen to twenty four months old they're just like their parents and ready to trundle off and bite the heads off cobras.

Gnoshing on snake-kabob

Have I piqued your interest yet? If not, get this: These animals are smarter than apes. Sure, an ape can use a stick to dig insects out of a hole. Woo hoo. Great tool-using skills. But check it out. Honey badgers can get out of almost anything using a wide variety of tools. I've seen them use bending tree branches, sticks, rocks they piled up themselves from all over the enclosure, dirt balls they made themselves, and carelessly abandoned rakes. If they're hunting for food, they can do the whole ape/stick thing to flush out termites. These little bounders are the epitome of resourceful!

There are some things whacked out enough to go up against a honey badger and win: lions, leopards, and the occasional hyena can take them down, along with a man with a gun. I personally would rather watch them with a telephoto lens from the inside of a van.

A Snippet of my W.I.P.

This is a snippet from my current work:

The Girl With the Razor-Sharp Scythe

The clangor of the wake up bell roused me from a mere doze. I'd been exhausted, but the fear that my cell-mates would eat me in the night kept me awake for much of the night. Breakfast consisted of a bowl of oatmeal and a cup of water. No spoon to eat with. I would have kept mine, if we'd had them. I would have sharpened it to use later. We ate with our hands.

All too soon we heard the thugs coming back down the row. They opened the cages and shocked stragglers with what were probably cattle prods until they shambled into some semblance of a line. A woman stumbled and fell in front of me as we edged to the door. The trooper leaned down to shock her but I sprang in front of her.

“Cut it out,” I growled. “She just fell.”

“You want I should spark you too, lady?”

“Please. I need a pick-me-up. For some reason I’m so full of breakfast I just can’t seem to move.” I even said it in my best joking voice. I guess Mr. Happy didn’t get me, because he reached out with his taser stick and shocked me to my knees.

“Get up,” he yelled. I hated the names he then called me. They made me feel little and filthy.

I resolved never to favor him with my ready wit again. I climbed slowly to my feet. The whole thing had done what I wanted, though. The woman who fell was able to shuffle into line without another painful message. I caught a glimpse of her slight smile as we moved slowly down the line, awaiting our turn to board the big carrier trucks. I wondered how they got enough gas to move those suckers ten feet let alone clear out to fields beyond the city. How the heck had we missed their engine noise?

Finally it was my turn to be yanked up into the truck. The door slammed behind us, leaving us no escape, even if we could bring ourselves to jump out of a moving vehicle. I heard the lock clang into place, a death knell to my hopes.

The trucks drove up a long ramp for seemingly miles, the women swaying like sides of beef in a butcher’s van. No one spoke or even looked up. I opened my mouth to say something but the nearest cadaver woman glared to shut me up. 

 

After a while the ground leveled off. The truck continued driving for about forty-five minutes more, bouncing and jouncing over ruts and potholes and minor stones. A few times we stopped and then started up again, presumably to pick larger rocks out of the road. I remembered having to do the same thing ourselves.

At last we turned off and circled around, bouncing over the rough terrain. The vehicle stopped and our masters came around to open the back door. They slung us out into the chilly dawn, handing each of us a threshing hook and a bottle of water.

The woman I’d defended came up behind me and whispered, “That has to last you all day.”

I nodded my thanks and followed her out to a section of field. Each woman bent and began threshing and walking, making bundles of the ripe-eared wheat. I remembered something my grandma said once. I could picture her smiling at me, up to the elbow in bread dough. “Thracey, there are lots of things you can do with wheat. We used to chew the wheatberries for gum.”

Then she’d made me try it. At the time, I thought it was a far cry from Edge gum and turned down another mouthful. Not this time. Every so often I stripped the berries off a stalk and stuffed them in my mouth, chaff and all. I spit the chaff out as I walked. The guards frowned on talking. We wouldn’t have had much to say to each other anyway. Each of us wallowed in our own pit of despair. Except that I wasn’t that far gone yet. I looked for escape.

We threshed all day under a blistering sun. 

That one tiny bottle of water didn’t last long. Soon I was trying to drag the last smidgen of moisture from the bottom.