Ceridwen’s Cauldron

Well, I think it’s all in. Unless I decide next week that I want to do some late-addition window boxes (which I might) everything is in.

This weekend Scott mowed the lawn and took out a bunch of dandelions (we are fighting a losing war against them, I think). I dug up a small, unused and overgrown half-circle bed in the back yard and planted the last of my impatiens in it. Also, I added a small, narrow bed behind our wildflower bed out front, and planted sunflowers there. Hopefully they will grow up, safe from marauding blackbirds.

We think the wildflowers are coming up — slowly. Every day we go look at them and cheer them on some more.

Scott took some of our leftover black earth and spread it on the patch of our lawn that was eaten by the white grubs last year (and dug up by raccoons this year) and re-seeded it.

As I was working out front, our next-door neighbour came by and offered me some tomato plants. She’d picked up a flat, and that was too many for her, so she asked if I wanted some. I took two cherry tomato plants, but she accidentally gave me three so each is in its own pot on the back deck. I also picked up a brandywine and something else that I think is called “ultimate sweet”, which is some kind of hybrid. So I have five tomato plants in the garden, and three in pots on the deck. Plus my one zucchini plant is looking good, as is the strawberry plant I have in a pot on the deck.

I was talking to our across-the-street neighbours today, as they were out gardening, and offered them some of our leftover black earth for their beds, as we have too much. They said they might take some, and complimented me on my side-bed of impatiens. *beams*

Our back shed actually has little window planters attached to it, but there are no flowers there, only weeds. That’s where I’m thinking of doing the little window boxes. It’s end-of-season for them now, so I can probably pick a few peonies or something up inexpensively, and our backyard will look so lovely and planned.

Er, yeah. If you ignore the mint and wildflowers overgrowing the side yard, the weeds and ground ivy everywhere, and the cedars that are still not trimmed.

Pool’s open, though. Woo!

Posted by Ceri under Garden & Home & Scribbles | 3 Comments »

This is something I’ve been noodling about with in my personal writing since I started on Echo and Afterimage, so I thought I’d toss it out there for discussion:

Spot the similarity:

Mulder and Scully
Harry and Hermione
Mal and Zoe

Have you got it yet? Male/Female couples who are friends, rather than romantically interested in one another (Yes, I know, that changed by the end of the X-Files series, but in the earlier parts of the show it was true, which was one of the things I loved about it).

I’ve been thinking about this lately, because I’ve been thinking about how difficult it is to have two opposite-sex main characters and not have people assume you’re setting up a romantic relationship between them. It’s just the logical conclusion, and having made up their minds, people will take any signs of friendship as signs of a budding romance.

(I know I’m speaking in generalities, here. I don’t have any data to back this up, but this is my impression from watching how people react to relationships in different media. )

But real life isn’t this way. I have plenty of friends who are men, who I have no romantic interest in whatsoever.  Yeah, I know, ha ha, Scott breathes a sigh of relief, but the reality of it is that even were I single, I would still not be romantically interested in most of my guy friends. Yet if two main characters in a movie are a male/female pair, it’s assumed they’re going to be together by the end. Why?

And can you write so that your audience understands otherwise? And how difficult is it? What do you need to do to make it clearly conveyed?

As I’ve said above, in some cases, it works – one of my favourite Firefly episodes is the one where Wash gets into a jealous rage about Mal and Zoe, because to me it was really obvious that wasn’t what their relationship was about. But those are the only three examples I can think of, despite wracking my brain. And even in those cases, there are people who will argue that there is an “obvious” romance.

If you were going to write a friendship, not a romance, between a male/female pair, how would you go about doing it, and making it clear that it’s non-romantic (or at the very least, not-yet-romantic might-be-in-a-future-book?)

Posted by Ceri under Writing | 4 Comments »

I’ve been really agitated lately. Not over anything in particular, but over reams of small stuff. Things are upsetting me or worrying me out of all proportion to their actual significance. It’s ridiculous.

I feel like I can’t write about these things here any more. Not that I ever really wanted to write extremely personal stuff here in the first place, but now that I’m working for a big corporation, I feel constrained – the Internet is watching, and anyone could see the things I write about, wibble about, worry about. So I’ve been thinking about posting it, writing the posts in my head, and then holding it in. It’s not good for me. I have this blog partly because I enjoy writing things out. But I don’t feel free to write here any more. It’s unfortunate, because there are things I’d like to share and get feedback on, and I can’t do it.

Maybe I should shut this website down entirely, or make it over into a professional site, with updates only about my writing work. It’s occurred to me.

Anyway, the more immediate problem is there’s stuff that’s been bothering me lately that I just want to talk and talk and talk about. And not in vague terms either. So I took an old journal off the shelf. It’s dated June 14 2006 – (and the end date is left blank, of course). The last time I wrote in this thing was 2007, shortly before I sold my last short story to Daw, and started working at Ubisoft. A lot’s happened since then.

If anyone needs me, I’ll be off somewhere quiet, writing furiously. It’s not used to that kind of exercise, so I expect my hand to hurt long before I’m done.

Posted by Ceri under Scribbles & Writing | 3 Comments »

My boss’ first words to me this morning:

“Did you want me to fire you, or are you going to resign?”

It’s his birthday. I kinda wrapped most of his desk in tinfoil, ribbon and dinosaur stickers yesterday. Oh, and covered it in balloons.

I was not the only person involved in this, but it would be safe to say that I spearheaded the effort.

ETA: Perhaps the day we’re getting our raises was not the best day to pull a prank on my boss. He was handing out the envelopes with the increases in them…

Me: Oh, I’m actually getting a raise?
Him: No, it’s  just a piece of paper that says ‘get the fuck out’.

(Apparently he was told that if he wanted to fire whoever decorated his desk, he’d have to fire half the team.)

Posted by Ceri under Scribbles | 3 Comments »

Something good about your day. About your life. Something enjoyable you’re reading. Something nice that happened.

I’m having an up-and-down kind of week. I need to hear some good stuff.

Posted by Ceri under Scribbles | 4 Comments »

Scott and I were just turning in the driveway last night, when I grabbed his arm and pointed.

There, sitting in the middle of our lawn, was an adorable brown rabbit. It was happily munching dandelions, and hopped away when we tried to get close enough to take a decent cell phone picture.

We’ve been seeing raccoons in the back yardfrom time to time  (they’re getting to be a nuisance, actually) and there have been many red-winged blackbirds. Plus the requisite bugs – ants, spiders, etc. This is the first rabbit we’ve seen, though.

Posted by Ceri under Scribbles | 4 Comments »

This morning I have booked a conference room, just for me, and I am going to go shut myself in, away from everyone, and work on some character stuff that needs to be done.

This is generally accomplished by me pacing back and forth and talking to myself and occasionally writing stuff down in notebooks and on notecards. I would do it at my desk, but that makes me look even crazier than usual, so off I go.

Posted by Ceri under Scribbles | 4 Comments »

The garden is mostly in. I am tired and sore, but otherwise happy about it.

On Saturday morning, I was up bright and early to nip over to the church near our house which was having a flower sale. I bought 8 boxes (!!!) of impatiens for our side flower bed, which gets lots of shade. Turns out I could have gone with about 6 boxes, so I ended up with extra flowers, but not to worry – there’s plenty of space in  our yard!

After I got back, Scott and I ran out to the market in Ste. Anne de Bellevue to pick up some seedlings. There’s an organic farm (actually, I think more than one) that sells vegetable plants there. Even though we were there early (I don’t think it was even quite 10:30) they were sold out of a lot of things, but I picked up 2 big beef tomatoes, and one called Black Prince, which produces purple (?) tomatoes, which are medium sized and reputedly very tasty indeed. I also picked up, on a whim, a zucchini plant.

It had started to rain by the time we got home, and we arrived to find that the 2 yards of soil I’d ordered had been delivered and was being rained on. We hurried out to get a tarp over it – and a good thing too, ’cause the torrential downpour we had for most of Saturday afternoon would have washed it all away! (I was later seen standing in the front window, looking mournfully at the tarp-covered mound and wailing “My dirt! My precious dirt!”. It was okay, though.)

We had Big Plans for Sunday, mostly that we would be Up Early, open the pool, start turning over some of the soil in the garden. Then, just before lunch, the Murphy-Hiscocks would arrive and we would have a lovely barbecue lunch with Luanna’s Gourmet Burgers, and then once they had taken Liam home for his nap, there would be more gardening.

If you’re guessing that didn’t happen, you’d be right. Or at least, it didn’t happen on Sunday because on Saturday I was mowed down by an out-of-nowhere cold, and had to cancel. So I went to bed early, got up late, stayed up long enough to get breakfast (french toast made from sweet potato-cinnamon bread we got at the farmer’s market. YUM!), then I went back to bed, and Scott mowed the lawn.

I was well enough in the evening to start turning over the earth in the front garden, but I didn’t get very far before Luanna called. She and I had tea while Scott finished (I do not know what I would do without him).

On Sunday the cold was 95% gone (I still have a bit of a cough) we were up early-ish, had lunch with Arin, Ron, and Liam as planned, which was lovely (and a perfect, sunny morning for it too!)  and then when they left we started on all the stuff we missed out on the day before. We got the pool pump back in and the cover off the pool and everything up and running again (I suppose it counts as “open”, though I wouldn’t want to swim in it in its present state. Ew. Give it a few days.) I turned the earth in the side bed,  (There were LOTS of roots from weed plants, many of which I got rid of – GO ME!), and the back bed where the tomato plants were going, while Scott mixed the black earth into the front bed and planted the wildflowers. He helped me with the side bed, then he got the back garden ready while I planted the impatiens.

We started all of this around 1:15. We finished at about 7:00, dirty, sore and exhausted. But it’s done – and let me tell you, I did NOT think we would get it all done in one day. We still have extra soil too, so we have to decide what we’ll do with that.

So this morning I’m exhausted but happy – I doubted it would ever happen, but the garden (small as it is this year) is started.

Posted by Ceri under Garden & Home | 4 Comments »

Teenager: “It used to be that 50% on an exam was a pass! That was in the good old days. Before we were even born!”

Posted by Ceri under Scribbles | 2 Comments »

My foot hurts.
My leg hurts.
My shoulder hurts.
I’m cold.
I cannot focus enough to write.
There aren’t enough hours in the day.
I don’t know how much soil I need and thus cannot order any.
Even if I had the soil, I don’t have the energy to garden.
The dandelions are taking over my lawn.
The kitchen is a mess.
The hot tub is broken.
The service guy hasn’t called to schedule an appointment to fix it.
My lace blanket needs to be unravelled.
I am tired and want a nap.
I want a week’s vacation even more than a nap.
I don’t have a week of vacation time.
I have a headache.
I feel like crying over a list of entirely minor and ridiculous things.

Posted by Ceri under Scribbles | 4 Comments »