Donna Andrews

This time can we lose the mosquitos?

It seems to be raining again.  It rained last night.  It's supposed to rain again tomorrow.  After that, Weather.com predicts a whole week of partly cloudy or mostly sunny, but I'll believe it when I see it.

Meanwhile, my yard is a sodden morass of red clay and mud.  Evidently actual grass doesn't like this much rain, although the weeds revel in it.  Making a mental note to discuss core aeration with my lawn guy.  Also reseeding, organic weed control, and hell, maybe even resodding.

I can tell that either I didn't remove the little black rubber plugs from the drainage holes in some of the planters on my deck or those planters need additional holes drilled, because there's standing water in them.  I should be emptying water and drilling.  In fact, I should be going around emptying all the little nooks and crannies that have filled up with rain, because I don't think we've had a frost yet, and they're not predicting one any time soon, and mosquitos could still be breeding in all those little pools and puddles.

Instead, I'm making a list.  One of those useless but amusing lists that always seem more interesting than whatever we're supposed to be doing.

Creatures I will not be taking on my ark (if it comes to that)

1. Mosquitos
2. Ticks
3. Bedbugs
4. Stink bugs
5. Slugs
6. Emerald Ash Borers
7. Japanese Beetles
8. Cockroaches
9. Poison ivy
10. Fleas
11. Kudzu
12. Ragweed
13. Pigeons
14. Chiggers
15. And (sorry, Bambi-lovers) the Virginia White-Tail Deer

Happily accepting suggestions for other flora and fauna we'd like to see less of.

In honor of Memorial Day

 

(Taken at the Arizona Memorial at Pearl Harbor.)

In honor of Luther Coleman Hornsby, September 6, 1892-November 14, 1918.  Wounded in World War I on the afternoon of Armistice Day and died of his wounds three days later. My great uncle.

And Stanley Montgomery Hornsby, Jr., 1925-November 23, 1944. My first cousin once removed.

Last chance to enter my "name the twins" contest

Some of y'all gave me a hard time about leaving you hanging at the end of Stork Raving Mad.  But there was a reason I ended the book with Meg heading out to the hospital--I knew it would be fun to run a contest and see if anyone could guess what Meg and Michael will name the twins.

And so far no one has.

So if you'd like to enter, read my guest blog at Killer Characters for some clues, and email me with your guess.  The first person to guess both twin names wins a signed copy of The Real Macaw.  And if no one guesses both, the signed book will go to the first person who guesses one of the names.

Guesses, anyone?

 

A family Valentine's Day anecdote

My brother stopped by Mom's place this morning to bring her a bouquet of flowers.  In the family, he's generally considered to resemble Mom's father, in looks and disposition, and his bouquet reminded her of a family Valentine's Day story.

My maternal grandmother grew up in Newport News, Virginia, and met her future husband when she came to Seaford, Virginia, for her first teaching job.  When word went out that a new and very pretty teacher had arrived, all the bachelors found a reason to call on her landlady--including my grandfather, who lived next door with his mother, the new teacher's landlady's first cousin. 

Apparently he won out over the various other bachelors.  By Christmas time, he wanted to give my grandmother a present, and called upon a friend of hers for advice.  Cou'n Edna, as my mother always calls her--she was the landlady's married daughter and my grandfather's second cousin, and lived across the street--picked out a china dresser set painted with tiny blue and pink flowers.  It included a dresser tray, a hairpin dish, a brush and comb, a powder jar--perhaps a dozen pieces in all, even including a hair receiver,  a little covered dish with a hole in the top that people in those days used to collect the hair that came out when they brushed, apparently to make wigs and switches and sentimental braided hair jewelry. The dresser set was a lovely present, and probably not cheap.  It always sounded to me like the kind of present that signaled his serious intentions.

My grandfather was dismayed when he saw what Cou'n Edna had picked out.  He'd had in mind some kind of small gift that he could tuck into his pocket and pull out when they were alone.  A bit of jewelry, perhaps.  He knew if he gave her the dresser set, he would have to arrive in full view of all the assembled family and friends carrying an enormous unwieldy parcel clearly intended for my grandmother.  Knowing his family, he probably realized he was in for a lot of good-natured teasing.  But he couldn't go back and get something else--it would hurt Cou'n Edna's feelings.  So he gathered his courage and braved the stares and teasing.  I think it was worth it.  My grandmother loved the dresser set and used it for the rest of her life.

Flash forward thirty-five or forty years.  My grandmother had minor surgery around Valentine's Day, and Mom went with my grandfather to see her.  After they parked in the hospital lot, my mother watched as my grandfather struggled to wrestle something out of the back seat of the car--the most enormous heart-shaped candy box she had ever seen, its red satin lid festooned with silk flowers, lace, and red ribbons.  My grandfather marched proudly into the hospital, carrying a gift that could probably been seen from blocks away.  Quite a change from the man who was mortified to be seen carrying a large wrapped present to his young lady.

A marketing sour note

I was organizing my garden catalogues and noticed, once again, what I think is a slightly off marketing note on the cover of one: "$50 worth of free product."

Maybe they just have an inept copywriter.  But when I see that, I don't think "Oh boy!  Free stuff!" I think "Product?  Is that all plants are to you?  Product?"

Okay, I know by saying product maybe they're trying to suggest that you can order anything with your free $50--not just plants but bulbs, seeds, tools, sprouting supplies, birdfeeders, fertilizers, and canisters of milky spore disease.  I think gardeners get that point.

So why not say "$50 worth of free plants?"

"Free product" makes me think I'm sitting in a shareholder meeting.  ("We found that doubling our prices and offering customers 'free' product when their purchases reached a certain dollar amount resulted in twenty percent higher revenue that we saw at the old price level.")

"Free plants" makes me  start daydreaming about this bare spots in my landscaping.  And if you're selling plants, you want me daydreaming about my garden--don't you?

So why is Etsy trying to be Facebook?

I love Etsy.  If you haven't heard of Etsy, it's a website that lets people sell handmade and vintage items.  Kind of like an eBay for crafts people.  Or like a virtual craft fair.  I love craft fairs, and I don't get to as many as I'd like these days.  I do a lot of browsing and even a little buying on Etsy.

This week I received an email from Etsy that said, in part:

We recently launched a new feature, Circles, that lets you connect with other people on Etsy. When you add someone to your Etsy circle, you can follow along with their favorites in your activity feed. It's illuminating!

Right now it's hard to find people you know on Etsy, and that's sad. Well, we're changing that. We're making it easy to connect your email address book to Etsy, so we can find people you know who are also members.

Maybe it's just me.  Maybe I'm the only Etsy user out here who hasn't been saying, "Damn, I wish there was a way to connect with other people on Etsy!  I want to see what their favorites are, and let them see mine. When is Etsy going to add a feature that lets me give them my address book?"

No.  I don't want to see my friends' Etsy favorites.  Illuminating?  How about information overload? I can barely keep up with what my friends are doing on Facebook. And I don't want my friends to see my favorites.  I might be shopping for them.  Or shopping for a guilty pleasure for myself.  Or maybe marking something as a favorite not because I want to buy it but because it amuse or appalls me

I just don't see Etsy as a place where I want to connect with people--apart, perhaps, from the craftspeople from whom I am buying something.  It's a place to shop.  I wish Etsy would focus on features that enhance the shopping experience, and stop trying to become a social network.

So no, I won't be adding any of my friends to my Etsy circle, and if Etsy makes it hard NOT to connect my email address book, I might just have to say goodbye to Etsy.

In the meantime, if I see something on Etsy that I want to share with a friend, or a group of friends, or the whole world, I will do it the old-fashioned way--I'll share a link.

 

 

Sales pitches that miss the target

Shutterfly just sent me an email with the subject "We've made something special for you."

Now before I go on, I should mention that I love Shutterfly.  I upload a lot of pictures there.  I get prints.  I make calendars.  I even used it to make a great Christmas present for Mom this year, a little "brag book" with all the best photos I took of my nephews and the rest of the family.

But in this particular case--well, I'll let you judge.

The text of the email said:

Short on time? Preserving memories is easier than ever. A photo book filled with your pictures makes the perfect gift to give or keepsake to treasure. We’ve arranged your pictures just the way you took them, but you can organize them any way you want.

  The photos in question were a group of shots I took of a flock of turkey buzzards.  I uploaded them to Shutterfly so I could send a link to a friend so she could see them and help me decide which one to use for that day's 365 project photo.

The proposed book cover features a tasteful shot of the whole flock feeding by the roadside (shown at the top of the page).  You can't quite tell what they're feeding on--I like to think it was a ripe, burst-open garbage bag, but it's hard to tell.  I didn't want to get close enough that I could tell.

On page one the buzzards are merely hovering menacingly over . . . something.  In the first spread, you get some closer shots of groups of buzzards.  The page with three buzzard shots against a pink flowered background is particularly festive, though I would have used the pink on page five, the first of the shots of a pair of buzzards billing and cooing like turtledoves.  (Shown at left. Who knew it was buzzard mating season?)

I like that they dedicated a single page spread to the closeup I got of a particularly fine individual buzzard. I'm not a buzzard expert, but I bet he's a grizzled old buzzard, a veteran of many roadsize carrion picnics.  He even looks rather noble, almost regal.  Well, for a buzzard.

Not making fun of Shutterfly.  Well, just a little.  Seems like every time I upload some photos these days, I get an email offering to turn them into a book.  Shutterfly's trying to maximize its sales, like everyone else.  Sometimes I find the memory book offers annoying, and sometimes useful--after all, if they hadn't sent me one in November, I'd never have thought of doing that brag book for Mom.

So I'm probably going to pass this time, Shutterfly, but thanks for asking.  And even more thanks for, unintentionally, providing me with a good laugh at time when I could really use one!

Baffling even myself

I often like to start each day's writing session by reviewing what I wrote the day before.  If it's good, I pat myself on the back a little.  If it's not so good, I start revising to make it better.  Either way, it gets me back into the world of my novel. Primes the pump.

Then there are the times when I read something I wrote last time and can only scratch my head and wonder what the hell I meant to write.  A few days ago, while reading and editing a section of the work in progress (provisionally titled The Real Macaw), I came across a scene in which Meg, my heroine, says, "I folded my eyes."

Huh?

No, she didn't narrow them or squint.  Maybe I meant to say she folded her arms?  I'll never know.  I rewrote the paragraph.

I also changed this morning's find, in which the macaw of the title was found "with one head tucked under his wing."

Clearly a very unusual bird. But since I'm not writing urban fantasy, I think the second head will have to go the way of the folded eyes.

Off to write a few more pages so I can stay on schedule.  And, no doubt, to write something else that I will find baffling tomorrow morning.

I was using my bare hands to fill a planter. Found a half-grown garter snake living in the bag of potting soil.

A goblin moment

While cleaning the kitchen, I looked down and saw three tiny, pale  fingers sticking out above the surface of the dishwater, as if a miniature goblin were waving forlornly for rescue.  (Or possibly, knowing goblins, trying to lure me in so it could pounce.)

I took a fork and touched the tiny fingers gently and they drifted apart, revealing themselves as three noodles that had briefly decided to float in perfect formation.

No goblins after all.