First off, a commercial.  If you want a chance to win a Kindle Touch and a copy of Susan Mallery’s next book BAREFOOT SEASON or a bunch of books, including one by me, Click here to enter The Bouquet of Books contest:

www.susanmallery.com/members/contest.php

You’ll need to join Susan’s Members Only area to enter, but it’s fast and it’s free! Enter now!

Now back to answering questions about writing.

Do you hear voices in your head?  Do your characters talk to you?

Yes.

Because all writers are crazy.

And hoards of them are headed towards me right now, to argue (perhaps violently) that they are perfectly sane, thank you very much.  And that I have no right to project my problems onto them.

“Mmmhmmm”  I say, nodding skeptically.  “You either have a problem, or you are in denial.”

But let me amend.  All writers are crazy (not that there’s anything wrong with that).

In 50 years, I’ve had at least three careers I am willing to count.  First, I worked in professional theater, as a first hand in a costume shop.  That’s a job title about as confusing as key grip.  I was in charge of stitchers (non sexist seamstresses) and supervised by a cutter (who did pattern making and draping).  Despite their titles and mine, I did the actual cutting and stitching of fabric.  And occasionally pattern making, tailoring, etc.

A lot of people I met were, shall we say, theatrical. Temperamental, moody, given to excess.  Every costume shop I worked in had a bottle of vodka somewhere, to get the smell out of costume arm pits.  And because it was good with orange juice.  We had no logical explanation for the beer in the fridge, or tequila…

Theater attracted a certain personality type.

Next, I became a librarian.  I used the part of my theater brain that had the patience to sew beads onto hems that would probably get stepped on, and work for hours over costume details that were too small to be seen by the audience.  In short, I used the OCD, anal retentive, got-to-do-it-right and there-is-only-one-right-way part of my brain.  Because librarians are a little nuts, too.

Not very, of course.  Librarians are the sanest of the bunch.  Although I heard that there was a shelver at the main branch who was autistic, and really good at his job (as long as you didn’t want to make eye contact).  And then there was the guy that did my inventory, who went back home and filled his apartment with gas cans, and…

Let’s just say, I only met him once.

Like theater, certain types of people are drawn to library science.

Now, I am a writer.  I use the theater part of my brain to be wildly creative and emotional.  I use the librarian half of my brain to be picky, technical, hyper-critical of my own work.  And when I am in the thick of a story, the plot and dialog are running as a continual sound track in my head.  At its best (or worst) I can shut it off.  At its worst (or best) it is like having a TV on in the next room, turned up loud enough to distract you from the people standing right in front of you.  And that TV is tuned to a really interesting show, while your family only wants to talk about boring stuff (like what you’re making for dinner and why it has to be pizza again).

Like the other two jobs, there are aspects of my work day that can be treated with psychotropic meds.  But writing has both other jobs beat, in the smorgasbord of mental illness.  Normally, if you tell a therapist that you spend your day disassociating from reality, talking to people who aren’t there, and laughing and crying over things that haven’t actually happened, they will write you a scrip, or at least begin furiously scribbling notes on your file.

Because people who are 100% sane don’t do that.

 

I don’t envy them their rationality.  It must be very boring. And it is probably lonely to have one person in your head instead of a whole bunch of imaginary friends.   And really, now that I have learned that I am ‘a writer’ I am much more sane and balanced than I used to be.  I spend a lot of time rooting around in my own subconscious, trying to understand myself, and the people who I am making up.  I also spend more time trying to understand the real people right in front of me.  I bleed off some of that excess emotion and fantasy, and can clear my head for reality.

And I am a good ways ahead of my mother, who had a really good imagination as well.  Which is my way of saying she was, totally psychotic.  When she made something up, she believed it was real.  I can separate fact from fiction.

And then sell that fiction to pay the mortgage.

For those of you who are now worrying that you are either too crazy or not crazy enough to be a writer, my next post will be on the care and feeding of the subconscious AKA “Where do your ideas come from?”

In another of my series of examples on ‘what not to do’ I’ve written a book that can’t be titled or described.

Not really.  I’m sure we’ll come up with something eventually.  But my editor says in the acceptance letter , “…this story is quite simply mad if you try and explain the plot to anyone (I know because I have tried!) “

She also says it is “fabulously, amazingly brilliant!”  Figured I’d better add that on there, so you didn’t think I’d gone totally off the rails.

But neither one of us has any ideas for a title.  I am seldom any damn good at them.  My working titles have been

“The actor book”   (like ‘The blind guy book”.  But, you know, with an actor!)

“The Actor and the Lady” (because the finished manuscript needed a header.  But someone should erase that immediately.  Ugh.)

And

“Jack and Cyn”  (Because the character’s names are less offensive to the eye than any of my other attempts.)

So, I am turning the project over to anyone who is reading this blog.  To sweeten this deal, I will give a signed copy of the “Ladies in Distress” trilogy (as soon as I have all three books myself) to the person who can come up with a keeper.  If we don’t use anything, I’ll throw the names in a hat and give away some free books.  But I could sure use some help.

Here is what I can tell you, to get you started.  And believe me, if I try to give you the whole plot, we will be here all day.  It is incredibly complicated.

The hero is an actor named Jack Briggs, who has been hired by an earl to play his heir.

So Jack is pretending to be John, Viscount Kenton.

The heroine is named Cynthia.  Her family calls her Thea, but Jack thinks of her as Cyn.  She is a girl of upstanding moral character and impeccable manners, except for… well… tons of things.  But she wants to be impeccable, and is trying very hard.

This is a marriage of convenience, with trickery on both sides.  She thinks she’s marrying money.  So does he.  They are both wrong.  The villain has all the money.  And they swindle it out of him.  Set an episode of “Leverage” in the Regency.  This is my book.

There is more to it than that, of course.  But we can’t put it all on the cover.  We have to save something for the inside.

So:  Any good ideas?

Any bad ideas?

It’s only January, and we still have the outdoor Christmas decorations up, since it is Wisconsin, and as I said before January.  It hasn’t been too bad here.  But it is hard to get any enthusiasm for climbing a step stool and pulling down ice when the wind is blowing and the porch is covered with ice.  Some people go for generic ’winter decorations’ that don’t need to come down at all.

And some people are just plain misguided, or perhaps creepy.  And they come up with things like this.

 

This is a lousy picture, since we were on our way to church, and I couldn’t exactly stop dead, get out of the car and march up on a strange lawn to get a better shot.  I did not want to meet the people that put these up.

What you have here is two sets of children’s snow clothes, stuffed, with foam wig heads in the hoods, so that blank white faces stare out at you.  Though the bodies are toddler size, one figure has a pair of adult women’s figure skates slung over  its shoulder.

I am guessing that the blades are very sharp.  And perhaps covered with the dried blood of the last person to get too close.

Any Doctor Who fans out there?  Because what I am seeing is this:

Somebody is using Autons as Christmas decorations.

Sure, it’s cute.

Until the shooting starts, and your phone cord tries to strangle you.  And you realize that the Dcotor is on hiatus.

 

How do you find the time to write?

How do I wedge some writing into my busy schedule of knitting and watching Downton Abbey? (Which is what I did today. Watching British TV actually counts as research, if you write British historicals.  So is reading romance novels, It’s a dirty job, but someone has to do it.)

It helps that it is now my job.  The pressure of contracts, bills and deadlines keeps me on track.  I get up and go to work every day, just as if I had a ‘real job’.

But how did I find time to write when I was working on a stack of unsold and unsale-able manuscripts and had no deadlines but the ones I set for myself?

I wanted to.  So I did it.  There is a little bit more to it than that.  But not much.

This is probably a strategy from Jenny Crusie, since I was following her around the internet, back in the early days, trying to pry as much advice out of her as I could. I’ve personalized it a bit, of course.  But she deserves the credit.

First make a list of all the top 5 things you really care about.

I’ll give you a hint.  There should probably be some people on this list.  Or maybe some animals. Things that are going to die if you don’t take care of them are actually more important than writing a book.

Until “Writing a book” is in the top five, you will probably not do it.

If you can’t get it into the top 5?  That’s OK.  It’s proof that you are busy, and that your life is full.  Some things, like small children, will not be on that list forever.  You’ve got to grab that time while you can.  The book will wait.

But it is possible to write while having small children.  I decided to become a writer in 1999, when my youngest was six.  I sold in 2005.  I never said it was fast or easy.  Just possible.

But suppose you still want to start a novel this year?  And writing is in your top five, and really important to you.  But your life is insane?

Make a list of five things that are part of your life right now, that you really hate.  Stuff that is sucking energy and money, wasting time, and making you miserable.  If it helps, calculate the actual cost of those things, in money and time.

Now dump them.

Your children will not become delinquents if you buy brownies at the bakery.  You do not have to be the chairman of every committee.  If you are involved in an activity that will collapse if you aren’t there?  Then congratulations!  You are the captain of the Titanic. It is not going to end well for you.  Get out now.  Run for your life.  I mean it.  Even if you aren’t writing a book.  Make some excuse and pass the buck.  Delegate.  Get out from under.

Because to be a writer, sometimes you have to seem like a selfish bitch.  Quit something on your bottom five.  Quit a couple of somethings. Teach the kids to cook.  Lower your standards.  Use that time and energy to write.  Because while you can farm out things like housework, you have to write the book all by yourself.

I’d already given up on a lot of things before even starting.  Never was much of a cook or housekeeper.  Also not all that good at holding a full time, demanding job.  So what was on my bottom five?

I gave up giving a damn about what people thought.  For example, my first plan was not to get published until anyone who might be shocked, embarrassed or offended was dead.  Over a decade later, everyone is still alive, despite the fact that I wrote “Seducing a Stranger” and “Virgin Unwrapped”.  The world did not end.

It took some time to work up the nerve to get out of my own way.  Of course, I got my ears pierced in teenage rebellion the year I turned forty.  My father told me not to.  So I didn’t.

And then, one day, I noticed I was heading into middle age.  I was at the hair dresser, admitting that I was ‘going to do that one of these days…’

And he told me that they pierced ears, got the girl with the piercing gun, and BAM, BAM.  Then she gave me a jaded look and told me that since I had been good, I could go next door to Baskin Robbins and get an ice cream, just like all the other little girls who came into to get pierced ears.

So sue me. I’m a slow starter.  But I get the job done.

So write a book.  And then buy yourself an ice cream.

Another winter day in Wisconsin, where you can measure the temp by how long it takes your nose hair to freeze.

Today?  A while.  Which means it is probably in the teens, with no wind.  (Ha.  I am wrong.  It is 3).   And labradoodle, Havoc has gotten hold of my gloves and left enough fingers to make an obscene gesture in Britain.

Thank you all so much for looking in, and for being eager to see me.  This is probably why it seems warm and sunny today.  And thanks to Helenajust for the questions on the Livejournal branch of this blog.

From Helena:

“How (or maybe why) do you manage to continue writing when there are many different demands on your time and emotional energy?

Do you regard it as a job which you have to do to earn money, and therefore try to work so many hours a day/week or write so many words per day/week?

Or does your brain keep plotting and writing dialogue etc. while you’re busy elsewhere, so that you have to find time to put it on paper?

Or do you get withdrawal symptoms if you don’t write? Or…”

Not curious at all, are you, Helena? But excellent questions!

If I want to talk writing, this is the perfect place to start.  Someday, when I do a full day, conference workshop (probably titled, Christine Merrill:  Will she ever shut up?)  I will begin hour one with “The Writer’s Life”, why you do it, and how do you find the time.

Let us start with “Is it a job?”  I can go back to a previous post, from the day I decided to go full time:

http://christine-merrill.com/2006/11/kids-dont-try-this-at-home/‎

The truth is, I accidentally quit my day job. After turning in my second manuscript (which was months overdue)  I’d gotten a multi-book contract without warning, and went into the boss’s office to negotiate cutting back to part time.  He said “No.”  And I gave notice without even thinking.

And then went back to my desk and had a small aneurism.  Did plenty of thinking afterward.  Writing has no income guarantees.  I already knew I was no damn good at being self employed, because I’d done it with theater.  When left unsupervised I was always slacking on deadlines, and a day late and a dollar short with the results.  But then, it was just me and the DH.  Now I had two kids, a house, and responsibilities.  I was totally screwing up my life!

But apparently, I’d grown up.  As a costumer, I was a flake.  As a librarian, I was a slacker.

Probably because I was always writing romance novels at my desk.

But as a writer, I am more reliable than most airlines.  Having bills to pay helps a lot.  I don’t work, I don’t eat.  Not quite that dire, I suppose.  My husband has a job.  But treating writing as a career has turned it from pin money into a significant part of the family income.

I like to do 1000 words a day, when I am on deadline.  I consider that an easy, marathoner’s pace.  I can do it without much thought, seven days a week if necessary.   It takes between one and eight hours, depending on the scene.  I work as long as necessary to get 1000.  Then I stop and have the rest of the day to do something else.

I divide a 75,000 word book by 75, set a deadline allowing for days off, hair appointments, unplanned emergencies, etc.  And off I go.  I write crap, if necessary.  But I write.

With 365 days in a year, this equals 365,000 words, or three and a half single title novels.

In theory.

But I don’t write that much.  200,000 words, or less, is closer to the truth.  I could do more if I shot the dog, threw the cat out, divorced my husband, disowned my kids, and changed my phone number so my parents and friends could never find me.  But this would not be much of a life.  I need time to do revisions, to watch Doctor Who and Sherlock, and have some sort of personal interaction with the people around me.

For example: I had to take a 20 minute break in writing this because the cat needed to sleep on my chest.  I had to tip my chair back so she could be comfortable, and I couldn’t reach the keyboard.

I can probably talk about goal setting and responsibilities next time, since I am so good at setting priorities.

Long time no see.

I’ve been planning to get back to the blog for months now.  It is one of my 2012 resolutions.  But many changes have happened in the last year.  Both kids are in college, and I am minus one cat, since Mohawk passed on a few months ago.  I am taking care of two aging parents, which is a lot like trench warfare: small gains, followed by hasty retreat.

And I’ve been writing, of course.  There will be three books out this spring, and another in fall.

I’ve also been going to the movies.  And am succumbing to the sort of depression you get when you realize that there will be sequels to both GI Joe and Clash of the Titans.

I hold with my original view on Titans.  Painting it black does not make Pegasus into a badass, pimped out ride.  It’s still a horse with wings.  When you muck out the stall, you will find glitter.  Just saying.

And adding The Rock and Bruce Willis to the GI Joe team may seem like a good idea.  But it will result in a geriatric Bruce Willis action toy.  No sane child is asking for that.

Other than that, I was tapped out for blog topics.

And then, I saw the new contest on CBS.  Sharon and Ozzy Osborne are sponsoring a sweepstakes.

http://promotions.mardenkane.com/cbs/cbscares12/

The winner and a guest get a trip to NYC and a three day stay in a luxury hotel overlooking Central Park, followed by a free COLONOSCOPY.

Normally, at this point, I’d use hyperbole and metaphor to make you laugh. But what could I possibly say?

And how much do I want a trip to New York?  Enough for fasting and enemas in a luxury hotel?

Unless ABC is offering a trip to Hawaii for a pelvic exam, this is only worthy of one post.  I need blogging ideas for the rest of the year.  I am open to suggestion.

And you can help!

So far, I’ve had no FAQ on my site.  And answering questions will fill blog space.    Anyone got any writing questions?  After 14 books, I have opinions about that.  But I will answer anything within reason.

Go ahead.  Ask away.

How are things going with me?

Not very well, actually.

In the garden, I will be forced to declare success with one zucchini!

Yes, that’s right.  One.  When everyone else in the world is leaving them at bus stops and in unwatched gym bags, I am hanging onto my one for dear life.

I have more luck with a modest crop of yellow squash, enough wax beans for a meal, a handful of yellow cherry tomatoes, and an excellent crop of Hungarian hot wax peppers.  This means that 90% of the stuff coming out of my garden is the same color.  Not sure what’s for supper tonight, but the odds are good that it’s yellow.

I settled with the phone company, without having to go to court.  They are giving me the deal I was expecting, and I’ve canceled my lawsuit.  And a big thank you to Jeff, who read my blog and put me in touch with the right people to fix the problem.

But this means I now know how to go to small claims court.

I’m very worried that this will come in handy, this week.

Both boys are now in college.  #2 son is in his freshman dorm, and seems to be adjusting well.  The big crisis in the move was the accidental breakage of his Waldo costume cane.  Since he has not had to bust out Waldo yet, we have some time to find a replacement.  But I am having a hard time adjusting to the fact that my baby has absolutely no trouble leaving the nest, and seems happy and well adjusted.

That kid was always suspiciously sane.  I have no idea where he got it from.

#1 son is still giving me a chance to mother him.  He has moved into his first real apartment, with a lease and everything.  It is not going well.

For months he touted the location and swore that once he was in, he’d never leave it, since it is directly across the street from the student union.  We saw the outside, and it was what I would charitably call ‘a dump’.  But that is true of most student housing, and not a surprise.  Living in a dump is kind of a right of passage.

2 weeks ago, we moved him in.  Hopefully, in a week or so, we will be moving him out.  Initially, the lack of electricity in the living room was  a problem.  The air conditioning was plugged into one of those dead outlets.  The space was hot.  And dark, because of all the burned out light blubs, and the filthy windows.

The filthy, glass about to fall from the rotting frame, windows.

Oh, oh.

And the oven didn’t work.

But neither did the intercom and buzzer for the door.  According to a repair man, it will only work if you plug a phone into it.  But since the majority of college students are as likely to own a gramophone as a landline, it appears that no one is using the buzzer . The other tenants tend to prop the door open.  So far, the interior hall has had a sparrow, a chipmunk and a bat.

They are only a few animals away from vermin BINGO.

I asked how much he was paying.  The answer:  more than we are paying for a 10 room house and four acres of land.

I couldn’t help it.  I laughed.

And encouraged him to call the building inspector.   This resulted in a 7 pages of code violations.  My favorite is the one where the front wall of the building wiggles if you pull on it.  Not the door.  Not the door frame.  The wall holding it.  The front of the building wiggles.

That’s a new one on me.

Because we have been taking care of #2’s move in, we have had frequent visits with #1, who looks kind of like the puppies in that commercial with the Sarah Mclaughlin song playing in the background.  The one that is so depressing that everyone changes the channel when it comes on.

We have now reached the ‘lawyering up’ stage of trying to break the lease. According to the city of Madison, landlords are supposed to provide a safe and secure building BEFORE they take the money, not after the building inspector makes them do it.

I never used to be the sort of person who screamed “I’ll sue!” every time a problem happened.  And then, the problems got bigger.

If anyone else has a scary landlord story, I am all ears.

 

Lately, I’ve been trying to write, get #2 son ready for college, and experiencing a bunch of other things in my personal life that can be best described as a class 4 fecal hurricane.

But one of the spots of stability for the summer was going to be my vegetable garden.  In getting ready for the graduation party, earlier this summer, I forced #2 to weed and till a little patch of earth close to the house.  I figured, at the very least, it would look less like an abandoned property, when company came.

The first plan was to have flowers.  But then, it occurred to me that I can’t eat flowers.  At least, not all of them.  And I really like fresh vegetables.  Mixing a few of them (ok, a lot of them) into the flower garden could be seen as forward thinking and stylish.

I read an article in at the orthodontist’s office, while waiting for #1 to get rewired.  There were pictures of a cottage garden with vegetables mixed right in.  It looked classy.  And this is a really nice orthodontist’s office too.  The magazines are current.

So, I’ve got flowers, an assortment of peppers, a few beans and peas, one zucchini and one yellow squash.  There are also 2 potted cherry tomato plants and one potted eggplant.

It is August.  So far, I’ve had 10 cherry tomatoes, a handful of Hungarian wax peppers and 2 peapods.

This cannot be natural.

I understand that the tomatoes went south after being over watered, and then falling off the porch.  I hate tomatoes, so I don’t really mind.  But I have grown peppers before and do not remember it’s being particularly difficult.  The eggplant was showing promise, with one dark shiny fruit the size of a shooter marble.  And then, one day that disappeared, as did the few tomatoes left on the bush.

I am now keeping the egg plant inside, in the kitchen window, watering regularly and praying over a few sickly white fruits that are not yet up to chicken egg size.

And I do not have any zucchini.  I have enormous squash plants with huge leaves and lots of yellow blossoms.  I could have planted them as ornamental shrubs.  They are the only things strong enough to block out the weeds that usually grow in that spot.  But they have no vegetables.

But I do seem to have an unusually successful crop of chipmunks.  They are fat and glossy.  I also have a cat with a perpetual wheeze that is on a long course of antibiotics and may or may not have asthma.  He likes to sun himself on the porch just above this garden.  I have caught him, at least once, a scant two feet from a frightened chipmunk.  Mohawk’s eyes were closed, and I swear he was muttering “Don’t make me have to come down there.”

I have spent the last three weeks preparing little plates of amoxicillin laced smoked oysters for this cat and begging him to eat.  Why smoked oysters?

Because ice cream is not good for him.

I should be rubbing the medicine on the backs of the chipmunks and kicking Mo off the porch and into the garden.  Everyone in America has zucchinis to spare.  All I have is fat chipmunks.

Of course, every other author who is getting into self publishing seems to be picking up money in buckets right now.  And although my reviews are good, my sales are not.

I am beginning to suspect that Amazon is full of chipmunks.

When you live in the country, you get used to certain inconveniences.   The grocery store is ten miles away.  The fire department is volunteer.  The roads don’t always get plowed.  And it’s hard to get fast internet.  Or cheap internet.  Don’t even think about streaming video.

And don’t get me started about phone service.

Wait.  Someone already did.  Frontier Communications, I have a bone to pick with you.

It’s hard to top the problems we’ve already had with our phones.  When we first moved here, Verizon tried to tell us that our hundred year old house didn’t exist.  Or at least that it had never had a phone before.  We went through two weeks of wrangling, much of it done by cell phone from the top of the nearest hill, since that service was even worse than a land line.

Finally after being told that it would be several weeks before they could tell us how many weeks it would be before they could think about getting us service, I’d had enough.  I was working in a corporate library at the time, and got out a directory of corporations.  Then I began making phone calls, starting at the top of the page and working down.   It only took one “How did you get this number?” call.  We had phone service the next day.

Now, it seems I will be having the same sorts of calls with our new company, Frontier.  A couple of months ago, they began courting me with regular sales calls, trying to get me to bundle services.

I was flattered.  Combined phone and DirecTV HD for $89 a month (for a year.  And then the price goes through the roof).  For moi?  Sign me up.  And I didn’t even bother to ask how high the roof was that the price would go through.  I am all about immediate gratification.  I could be dead in a year.  But before I passed, I could see Doctor Who with crystal clarity.

They did not offer to bundle in the internet, because there isn’t any internet.

As I said, sign me up.  So they did.  It took over an hour, and a conference call with DirecTV customer service, since I had to upgrade that first.  It was very complicated.  A couple days later the dish installer showed up, and I was watching the fat glistening on the pork on Food Network.

Shiny.

But the bundled bill never materialized.  And the TV had gone up by around $22.

Led astray by a telephone solicitor?  Live and learn.  But I was loving my HD.  And the phone still worked.  Most of the time.

Did I mention that we lose phone service every time a mouse makes a new nest?  We spend a couple of weeks a year without working phones because of these little outages.  The last totally important call that died in static was a couple of hours ago.

Some mouse must have had a blessed event in the telephone slick hut.  I will keep the cell phone charged.  But back to the story…

Three months pass, and Frontier calls again.  They have a deal for me.

Hells, yes, I still want the deal.  What happened to the last guy?  We were on the phone so long I thought we had something special.  As I said before, sign me up for that bundle discount.  Stay on the line?  Answer yes and no to the third party verifier?  My bill will be prorated?  I know the drill.  I’ve done this before.  I want to cooperate.

Months pass.  So far, my phone bill has been $70 something, $280 something, and this month $186 something.

You notice, none of these are $89.  At least, I think it was $89, because the deal, which was easy to find online a few months ago, has now disappeared from the internet.  And Nancy “No, we can’t tell you her last name” at customer service, says I was never intended to get that deal, which was for new customers only.

Yesterday, they offered me $15 off per month for 2 years.  Since 186 minus 15 does not equal 89, I refused.  Today, I suggested they unbundle and switch me back to my old $42 phone plan.  Quelle surprise, it no longer exists.  I must enjoy the new $70 plan.

Which apparently, I switched to because $70 is cheaper and more convenient than $42.

Or I can be grateful with the two year, $15 discount.  And perhaps they should give me a hammer to beat myself in the head until I believe that $55 is cheaper than $42.

Or I can enjoy the convenience of bundled billing and spending hours on hold trying to get untied.

Or, I could go on the internet and rant.  It’s a nice first step before small claims court.

As usual, I am making excuses for not having posted recently.  At the moment, my life can best be described as ‘all hell breaking loose.’  But usually, I don’t wake up to such an obvious confirmation of it.

We have an electronic weather station in the living room that is supposed to keep us abreast of unimportant things like the temperature, and more important things like impending tornadoes.  Mostly, it just beeps a lot.  And when we check it, it tells us that it is either very cold, very hot, or about to snow.

In winter, that last one isn’t exactly news.  This is Wisconsin.  Duh, weather machine.  I do not need a beep every time it snows between November and March.

Some day, I’m going to hit that thing with a hammer until the noise stops.  Or maybe learn what button to hit that shuts it up.  But that seems, I don’t know, rather moderate, considering how much I’ve come to hate it.

Today, however, it is definitely earning its keep.  I can hear thunder, see lightening, and feel that the ground is wet.  The DJ on the clock radio says that a major storm with high winds and hail is headed this way from the west.  And the weather station is beeping.  Because of an

AVALANCHE WATCH.

Never would have seen that coming.  Probably because of the total lack of mountains for thousands of miles in all directions of me.  The piles of stuff on the desk are getting kind of tall, and the to-do list is getting kind of long.  But I don’t think they are going to slide and crush the house.  But just in case, the DH rushed upstairs and demanded that #2 son get up and prepare.  Had he had avalanche drills in high school?  Do we go to the basement for this, or the attic?

He said he had no idea.

DH:  So what did they teach you in school, then?