the writing life

I finally got brave and unplugged the white Apple mouse I've been using for the past few days - and plugged in the funky black upright mouse I had insisted I needed. When it arrived, along with the keyboard, it looked so weird and felt so weird beneath my hand, I chose not to try it out.

But I kept feeling tension in my right forearm using the regular mouse, and yesterday I made the change.

I complained about it for five minutes, then it started to get easier. Today, it's like I've been using it forever. And the arm stays totally neutral and relaxed. My set-up is clunky looking, with cords and boxes and all the other stuff on this desk. Nothing matches anymore. I'm sitting with my feet up on a cardboard box recycled from the last UPS delivery. But suddenly I'm truly comfortable.

In addition to the new chair, keyboard, wrist rests, gel mouse pad, upright mouse, fancy foot rest (not!) and elevated screen, I'm now set up at the desk in the living room. I'm not sure why I no longer want to write in my garret, but I suspect it has something to do with ease of access. This way I can write while cooking. I can dash out to the barn and settle right back in to the pages without disappearing upstairs. It might not be permanent, but for now, I have a new office.


The newfound comfort has translated into writing/editing in several one-hour blocks both yesterday and today. Even better, it has resulted in many aha! moments with regards to book issues. In the bathtub yesterday, in the car today. I love when the book is right beneath the surface of my regular routine, bubbling up whenever there's a lull.

Today I actually went online and commented on LitPark, a wonderful site I haven't visited in several months. Head on over - there's a fascinating discussion about literary fiction and thrillers.

It's good to be back. I've been missing the writing life.

busy but good

Typing to you from the new keyboard, wrists resting on cool gel pads, mouse skating along on the gel mouse pad too, and screen raised to nearly eye level.

I still need the foot rest but the set-up is close enough and comfortable enough that I worked on the book for an hour this morning. A good thing - now the top of my head won't be blowing off.

The week is busy and I think my getting the cold, which is nearly gone now, was an in-advance response to all the things on my schedule.

We have trailer cleaning, fence repairing, shower head replacing, riding lessons, costume shopping, haircuts, acupuncture, cast check, clients, and I have a 3-day workshop this weekend, called For Whom Have I Journeyed? Spiritual Initiation in the Sandplay of Midlife Men.

I'm excited. This is the kind of workshop that does double duty: it's continuing education for my work, but it also feeds the writing.

Around the farm, we have a new barn cat in training. Mystic has decided that his calling is to join Dickens E. Wickens in the cowboy life. He is out there constantly, helping with stall mucking, learning how to drink from horse buckets and troughs, and lying in the pasture with the horses while they graze. I had a feeling he was destined to be a cowboy.


(photo credits to daughter)

A cowboy named Mystic. I think I might have a new book character forming.

cody's big adventure

Today my daughter and husband set off with the new truck and trailer, hauling the lovely Cody, aka Coden Locomoden, aka Coco-puff, to his first Pony Club activity. They are riding in a mock fox hunt!

It was a little sad for me as he loaded, because if the pony were up to speed, he would be the one going. However, after they drove off, and I let Keil Bay and Apache in from the front field to have some hay in the stall with the fans, the Little Man looked at me with what felt like appreciation. We are trying to take good care of him and allow the acupuncture and other things to take effect. I think he knows that.

Salina was a bit concerned that we were taking one of her geldings away, but she limited her trumpeting to one long whinny. Keil Bay was simply happy it wasn't him being hauled off to do things in the mid-day sun.

Why am I not on the road with them? I developed a sore throat Friday afternoon and went to bed with a stuffy nose. I'm feeling better today except that I think my body is running a fever off and on fighting this thing, so I opted NOT to have my debut trailer hauling experience this weekend. (meaning, me driving the truck and trailer without husband along!)

Adding the scoop now that they are on the way home and have called with an update.

Daughter says he did great - "he didn't buck or spook or run off" - well, I'm REALLY glad to hear THAT. :)



His main issue was going through water. As a 5-year old who has not left the farm since he came here at age 2, I guess he's probably never seen a big body of water. He jumped up on a 3-foot bank at one crossing, but walked back down when asked. He jumped completely OVER one of the crossings instead of walking through, which I suppose bodes well for his career in jumping/eventing.

And finally, he followed a BTDT horse through, and hopefully learned that the water does indeed have a bottom to it and won't swallow him whole.

Otherwise, he handled his first big outing well. She had to do half-halts to keep him at the proper following distance from the pony in front of her. He whinnied some. But he had no issues with horses galloping past, or odd noises, with riding through forest or up and down hills, or past fields with horses bucking and neighing, or the general atmosphere of riding with a group of horses he didn't know.



He unloaded and loaded back up at the end "like an angel," my husband reported.

And now they are all home. He walked off the trailer and headed for the round bale in the barnyard!

a real treat for word lovers

Roy Blount has a new book coming out called Alphabet Juice: The Energies, Gists, and Spirits of Letters, Words, and Combinations Thereof; Their Roots, Bones, Innards, Piths, Pips, and Secret Parts, Tinctures, Tonics, and Essences; With Examples of Their Usage Foul and Savory.

In it, Blount writes:

To me, letters have always been a robust medium of sublimation. … We're in the midst of a bunch of letters, and if you're like me, you feel like a pig in mud. What a great word mud is. And muddle, and muffle, and mumble. … You know the expression "Mum's the word." The word mum is a representation of lips pressed together. … The great majority of languages start the word for "mother" with an m sound. The word mammal comes from the mammary gland. Which comes from baby talk: mama. To sound like a grownup, we refine mama into mother; the Romans made it mater, from which: matter. And matrix. Our word for the kind of animal we are, and our word for the stuff that everything is made of, and our word for a big cult movie all derive from baby talk.

What are we saying when we say mmmm? We are saying yummy. In the pronunciation of which we move our lips the way nursing babies move theirs. The fact that we can spell something that fundamental, and connect it however tenuously to mellifluous and manna and milk and me (see M), strikes me as marvelous.

information overload

I'm swimming in information here at my desk today. In my ongoing equine diet research, I've got everyone very happily on soaked beet pulp, alfalfa pellets, rice bran, and their supplements. I'm very much wanting to add whole oats to the menu. Not all of our horses/donkeys get all of the above, but having the whole ingredients on hand means everyone gets what they need.

Right now we're rotated off all supplements except for the seniors who are getting a joint supplement in between their Adequan courses.

And Cody is getting BOSS.

They're all getting psyllium and pro-bios this week.

It's time to re-order the custom flax mix, but I'm signed up for a class in equine nutrition and I keep thinking what I learn there will affect what I do with the custom mix.

I need to send off grass and hay samples for analysis so I'll have our numbers in front of me when the class starts.

I'm thinking I should re-order the general vit/min supplement next. But which one? The one I used previously turned out to be soy based, so I'm switching. The one I like best among the new possibilities is too similar to the flax mix I get. More reading, more info.

Meanwhile, I've been researching de-worming protocol and determined I have probably been underdosing. While reading about that, I stumbled onto a de-worming schedule that addresses the adult Onchocerca and supposedly, with many positive anecdotal results, is also ridding a number of horses from various types of itching and deep sulcus thrush among other things.

I did a test on my herd, and have seen some results that bear out what I've read, so now I'm rethinking my entire de-worming strategy.

Add to this the kinesiology test results and herbs and you see that my brain is boiling over with data. It's all faithfully written down in my barn calendar. Who got what when, and what resulted. But sometimes I feel like buying a hundred acres, planting it with grass and adding what the soil needs to be complete for horses, and doing wild horse style turn-out.

Keil Bay and Salina would be happy until the magic hours of mealtime, and then they'd both beat a path to my back door. And there would be Rafer Johnson, Cody, and Apache right behind them, loyal herd members that they are.

I would miss mixing the feed tubs every morning, because truly, I love the scooping and the customizing and the ability to tweak things on a daily basis.

Sometimes though, I have a secret longing for the whole "ignorance is bliss" approach to ... I was going to type horse care, but really, it would have to be to life in general.

Which is of course not at all my style. But it would be nice to be able to turn the switch for a few days a month.

Knowledge database OFF. Ignorance Is Bliss Over-ride button ON.