And, Boy, Was it Cold

Before 9:00 am this very very very cold morning, we installed Karen’s bench. We’re calling it “The Rest.” Come over and sit on it with us.

Deb, Liz, and Murphy

Bench Installation: Karen Heyl and crew

The Rest

With the Characters of the Novel…and the Bees

Reader, I know it’s frustrating to come here and find nothing new. I hate it, too. But for some reason I’m not as inclined to write here while I’m also visiting with the characters of the novel.

To tell you the truth, we don’t do much visiting. I sit here and watch them, and then I write down what I think they’re doing or thinking or saying. Sometimes I have to sit here for a very long time before they let me back into their lives. Sometimes they tell me things when I’m not at my computer and when I’m not really thinking about them at all…suddenly, I’ll get a message of some kind. It happened as I watched the Golden Globes last night. So, I think they may be sitting somewhere in their world watching my life unfold, too.

Anyway, all of this to say that I’m sorry I’ve been absent from Not Alice.

I have not, however, been quite so absent over at TwoHoneys. You know, it’s good for beekeepers to keep good records; but as you can probably already guess, I’m a sloppy record keeper. I usually fly by the seat of my pants. I would make a very bad bee. (I may even be a bad beekeeper.) Writing about the bees and what they make me think about on a blog is easier for me.

Our nephew, Jerod, is helping me dress up the TwoHoneys site, and we’re not nearly finished yet, but you’re welcome to start reading. We envision it eventually becoming a part of a larger website. Eventually I hope a few beekeepers find it and contribute; until then, it’s just me. And you.

You can always find the link to TwoHoneys here at Not Alice…on the blogroll.

Digging Up Worms

We had some friends over last night, and of course one thing led to another, and soon we were talking about composting. I think this conversation began with talk of the outhouse I hope to build over here this summer. No one really takes me seriously about this outhouse…well, no one other than Karen Heyl who immediately offered to help me design it…which is exactly the kind of attitude I like. Most people try to tell me all the reasons I couldn’t possibly want an outhouse behind the garage. But I diverge from the topic at hand…composting.

So, yes, we compost. But Heidi asked if we had earthworms in our bin. Well, we have whatever earthworms may have found their way over to our compost heap, but other than that, no, we haven’t intentionally introduced them. Heidi and Cathy’s kids introduced 160 worms to their compost bin last year, and they say their composting has really taken off.  I asked where they got their worms…and the kids told me they dug them up in their yard. Duh. Wonder why I thought you had to order earthworms from a catalog or something when they’re right there in the back yard. What the heck is wrong with me?

So, I asked the kids if they would dig some worms from our yard this spring and put them in our compost bin, and they looked pretty delighted with the idea. But 10-year-old Ann quickly got all business-like about it and set their price. She said that the three of them would work for $2.00 each per hour. Uh-huh. She’s an operator. I agreed to the wage, but now that we’d settled on a price, I asked her what was to keep them from just loafing around in the dirt rather than finding worms. She smiled at that prospect. Now I’m gonna have to offer some kind of incentive…like a $1 or $2 bonus for the one who collects the most worms.

Suddenly I’m kinda looking forward to it, and I keep finding myself imagining those little worms crawling around and eating up our compost.

Stickin’ With It

Oh yes. I did it. I twirled around in the grocery store parking lot and headed back to my car and retrieved my cloth bag. I am awesome.

Sometimes I Am a Weirdo

Friends, I have come to confess: Here it is not 5 full days and one official, full-fledge grocery run into the new year, and I have already blown my resolution to smithereens. Yes. It dawned on me as I was pushing my cart up the pasta aisle that I had left my only cloth bag in the back of my car, and I decided not to go out in the snow and get it. I feel sort of terrible about it, but you don’t want me to trudge all the way out to the car in that snow, do you? That seems excessive to me. And yet I am developing no good habits by making it so easy on myself. 

And something was really wrong with me today…I ran out to the bank and to the grocery store in the oddest looking collection of clothes and shoes imaginable. When I got out of the car at the bank, I took a good hard look at myself, and I got a little embarrassed. I can’t even begin to tell you the extent of the oddness. It shocked even me. And I prayed like crazy that I wouldn’t run into anyone I knew because I would really have some explaining to do.

I Need Pizza

My usual Sunday-night pizza plans have been interrupted, and I do not like it. To make a long long story short, there are just too many wonderful invitations by too many wonderful friends…and that is all very good. But sometimes you just need to sit down with one or two people and a diet Coke and a salad and a pepperoni pizza. I like to do that on Sunday nights. I don’t know why…when I was a kid and living with my parents, we used to have a really nice mid-day dinner after church on Sundays. Then we were all on our own for supper…and it didn’t matter a bit to my parents what we ate. So we had Coke floats. A tall, wide glass full of vanilla ice cream with a Coke poured over it. There was just something glorious about the frivolity of that that I love. And now I like to do it with pizza. But not tonight.

2010: Less Waste

Suzanne’s right. My past New Year’s Resolutions have focused only on improving me. But I guess I’m about as good as I’m going to get, so now it’s time to turn my attention to bigger things. My resolution for 2010 is to stop with those plastic grocery bags; instead, I will make it my practice to use my own cloth bags. 

You know, I keep a couple of those reusable bags in my car. And I have one in each of my scooters. But I forget all about them when I go into the store, and then I think to myself, “Oh shit, I have those bags in the car. Oh well, next time.” Well, this year, there will be no more next times. I resolve to go back out to my car and get my grocery bags and use those and stop contributing to our problem of landfill waste. 

Done.

They Pile Up

Several years ago, I decided to set some reachable New-Year’s resolutions. No more lofty goals for me. I decided that instead of having a dismissive attitude about these resolutions, I could instead look back each year and realize that my life had actually improved because of some little thing I changed. 

My Past-Years’ Very Practical New-Year’s Resolutions:

1. Stop using soap on my face. Now, I use cleansers only
2. Take a daily vitamin (for me, it’s Centrum. Maybe it’s time to switch to Centrum Silver)
3. Drink more water
4. Floss
5. Call my parents once each week (still not happening)

I think I’m missing a couple…if they come to me later, I’ll edit the list. I haven’t yet decided what little thing I can work on in 2010…I’m considering a couple of good ones…but I have to say that this is more fun than deciding to “be a better person” or “lose 10 pounds” or some other thing that I know I’ll simply brush off. 

If you have a suggestion for 2010, I’m listening. And, no, I am not going to eat less pizza.

Who Are These People?

Any work of fiction of over 40,000 words is considered a novel. I have 11,175. Most novels are between 80,000 and 100,000 words. It goes like this: short story, novelette, novella, novel. So, if I want a novel, I have a way to go. I ask it almost every day…do you want to be a novel, or would you rather be something else? I take the ensuing silence as a sign to keep writing. But it’s been going slowly these past weeks. Good thing I’ve got some room to work this out because, so far, I have no idea what these folks are supposed to do. There’s no real conflict yet…although one character is getting irritated with another. That’s a start, I guess. They’re developing some interesting lives, I think…but I don’t yet know their histories. That’s the weirdest part. I don’t know who these people are or why they act this way. 

One of them had better have a rough Christmas visit with her parents so I can start to learn something about that, too.

Miracles

Karen Heyl has finished our bench. Dana is finishing the wax horse. I am writing the novel. I do not know where this impulse to create and revise and polish comes from, but it’s sort of miraculous. I like to think this is how God feels every morning.