The Philharmonic

Bruce and I always get season tickets to the classical series performed by the Evansville Philharmonic Orchestra. I love where we sit. Not only is it great for hearing and viewing what's happening on stage, but every now and then a composer will end up sitting in the seat next to me. That happened Saturday. The man who wrote the first piece, Fucocoso(Fiery), sat right next to me. Mr. Plog said he has three children, lives in Germany and writes when he can. He tries to write every day. Some days are more productive than other days. He plays the trumpet and knows Tim Zifer, the principle trumpet player in our orchestra. I wonder what it's like listening with an audience to something you wrote yourself? He said he felt the orchestra played his piece well.

Plumbing

On Thursday, I innocently put a load of clothes in the washing machine. Little did I know the trouble that domestic act would cause. Bruce, as luck would have it, came home from work at the exact moment the machine hit the spin cycle and the toilet began to resemble Niagra Falls. It overflowed big time. Poor guy and he'd had a good day too! After stopping the washer and cleaning up the mess,we found when we flushed the toilet, water came up the kitchen sink. Not good. We hated to do it, but we called a plumber. I always imagined plumbers to charge for their labor and parts like car mechanics do. You know how it is with a car, one little scratch and it's a thousand dollars. The plumber had to go under the house and then later he hefted a machine into the bathroom (to "stir things up").I could only imagine how much it was going to cost. I pretended to read a book and glanced up from it now and then to see what they were up to. Thankfully, Bruce stayed home from work to supervise the whole ordeal. I'm very glad he did because it is embarrassing to me to have people messing around in the bathroom. What did they see down that hole anyway? What did they bring up? I could hardly look at them. When the machine stopped, the men started talking again. I strained to hear what they were saying and then I was sorry I did because the shorter of the two turned to my husband and said, "Well, that's one thing women can't blame us for." Where could I run and hide? In the end, they were only here for an hour and we were charged approximately $150.00.

Friendship Comes in All Shapes and Sizes

I've been working on some winter and holiday themed items for my store Shell's Designs This adorable Teddybear with his arm around his buddy snowman! I've been coming up with all kinds of cute sayings for this pair! There are so many good friendship quotes and sayings to go with this design! One of my favourite sayings is 'Friendship Comes in All Shapes and Sizes' It really does, people can be diversely different in there opinions and styles but can still be friends! I love that! To see more of my designs please pop by my store for a visit you never know what might inspire you! Have an awesome week and remember 'A smile is a curve that sets things straight!'

Indiana University Newspaper

Indiana University made a very wise decision when they hired my daughter Suzanne to write articles for them for their newspaper. I know I'm sort of biased, but honestly she's a great writer and living in Santiago, Chile where she will find new and interesting things to write about. She's even going to interview someone for me. I'm writing for Altrusa International of Evansville. There are Altrusans in Chile... You can see where I'm going with this. She speaks spanish and can talk to people I can not.

Unbelievable

I had the most amazing experience yesterday. It began with my husband asking me if I wanted to canoe on the Wabash river; a relatively tame river near us. I assured him that was a wonderful idea. There's nothing better than being out in nature, right? We're both from Minnesota and have been camping and fishing all our lives. We bought the canoe because we enjoy the Boundary Waters Canoe area between Canada and the United States. We're the "outdoorsy" type one might say.

We were on the water by 8:00 a.m. breathing the clean air and appreciating the still day "Sigh" So lovely... just quietly gliding through the water when, with absolutely no warning whatsoever, a fish (I'm guessing 8 lbs) flew out of the river and into the canoe right at my feet. Talk about almost peeing my pants! It flopped all around and bled everywhere. I screamed as my husband stared wide eyed,his mouth open. Thankfully,the fish danced its way into the center of the canoe.

After everyone calmed down (including the fish) my husband took a picture of it and then bravely picked it up and threw it back in the river. We continued our journey. I sat in the front of the canoe with fish slime all over me, my adrenaline pumping,and holding my paddle tight-- basically on red alert. I noted every bubble, every ripple, and tiny wave on the water. Another fish could attack after all. Maybe they've decided to fight back?

We saw other fish jump here and there on the river as normal fish will do. We would have thought nothing of it before our little meeting with Mr. Slimy. However,after that fish decided to greet us up close and personal, we viewed anything with scales above the water as quite threatening.

Just when our nerves were beginning to settle,we entered water with a lot of ripples on the surface. There was fish activity under the surface I just knew it. My adrenaline surged again along with my imagination. I was positive there were hundreds of those huge fish under the water stirring things up. In fact, I was in the process of telling my husband that we should get the heck out of there when, and I am not kidding you, a small school of very large fish (equally as large as the one that jumped in our canoe) breached way out of the water together like synchronized swimmers and flew through the air right next to our canoe. The water was in motion and so were we! You should have seen us paddle!

I was told later by a local fisherman that the fish are called Asian Carp. The one we saw up close in our canoe didn't look like what I think carp look like. It didn't have ugly sucker lips. It was actually quite attractive as far as fish go. Later when we were shopping in the town near by, I met a lady that lives on the Wabash River. She said there was never a problem with these fish until about three years ago. Her husband is an avid fisherman and she used to go out with him all the time, but not anymore. She's been afraid to ever since a friend was hit in the head by one of those fish and nearly fell out of his boat. Sooooo- if you want a taste of nature, paddle down the Wabash river in a canoe. It's quite the adventure!

Body Farm

My second manuscript turned out to be a middle grade novel called Murder on Sprinkle Lake. When I first started writing this, I thought it was going to be a YA novel and had an older audience in mind. In that story there is a murder; a character is hit on the head with a heavy object. I wanted to know what the result of the hit would be like as far as blood and stuff goes. I also had questions about the condition the body would be in if found several hours later. My questions took me to the University of Tennessee where my cousin works in the Forensic Anthropology Dpt. She gave me a very interesting tour (including a room filled with boxes of skeletons all neatly organized). She told me that she could tell an awful lot just by looking at the bones. She used to assist in autopsies and explained about that. Basically, I found out that the character in my story would have been a bloody mess. When the tour inside the college was over, she took us (my husband and two of my adult children were with me) to the Body Farm. Yup the very Body Farm Patricia Cornwell went to when she was writing her book, Body Farm. If you haven't read it, you should. I happen to like her writing in general--keeps you on the edge of your seat. Anyway, the Body Farm is as creepy as it sounds. Interesting though. My cousin is doing research on what sorts of animals munch on the bodies. She wasn't the only one doing research, the FBI had a garbage can with a body in it. They were studying the decomposition rate with the lid closed being they find a lot of bodies in garbage cans I guess. Most of the bodies were pretty decomposed. I guess a gossip magazine got in there once and took pics of the bodies and put them on the internet. Nearly closed the place down. So--now the bodies are covered until they are pretty far along in decomposition. In the end I didn't use much of what I learned that day. It is tucked away in my head, however, and may come out in another story. Maybe the one I'm writing now, who knows? My current writing is for a YA audience. An agent at a conference in Ohio told me that if my protagonist is less that twelve years of age, it is a middle grade novel. This time my protagonist is sixteen.

Back to School So Soon

Hard to believe that September is here! Where did the summer go? I hope you had a good one and were able to do some fun things with your families.

I wanted to share this great link with you, the leader of the rocketmoms put this awesome article together showing who all the Rocketmoms are and each one gave a short answer of why they love the rocketmoms. It is really cool, so check it out! Meet the Rocketmoms

I've been very busy creating a lot of different products for my store. Shell's Designs! Working on Christmas and holiday designs right now! I just added an RSS feed to my blog so you can view my latest designs as I created them! Have a fabulous week and keep smiling!