Steve was complaining about not getting enough screen time lately. Also, about my terrible habit of procrastinating instead of writing. Well, I said to him, what do you want me to do – write, or put up a blog post with a picture of you? I can’t very well do both. He chose the latter. Which goes to show just how seriously I need to take him when he grumbles at me about my procrastination.
So here he is, looking dapper in front of my screen. Now that he gets double screen time – in front on my screen, and displayed on yours – hopefully that’ll keep him happy for a while. It’s really hard to write with those bearly grumbles coming from the corner of the room.
In other news, it’s a gloriously sunshiny spring day, which makes me feel happy. I know, you don’t really care – but I don’t really have much else to tell you today. Unless you want to hear about my frustration with the bank, who is making me go through an incredible rigmarole to get them to stop sending me paper statements for my line of credit? No, I didn’t think so. Sunshine and stuffed bears it is.
Life, the Universe, and Friday Frivolities. Have a lovely weekend!
The problem with blogging is that there comes a point when you feel the pressure to produce something. To come up with erudite, witty, cohesive pieces of writing on a regular basis because you figure that your readers expect it of you. (That’s on the assumption that you have readers. Let’s hold onto that illusion, shall we?) Well, I’ve had quite a few ideas for posts this past week, but I just didn’t get around to solidifying them in writing. And as with many things in life, if you don’t strike [the keys on the keyboard] while the [literary] iron is hot, you lose it.
But then it occurred to me that there’s no reason it always has to be cohesive, erudite or witty, never mind profound. Sometimes, life is made up of little bits and pieces, the mosaic of existence. So today, for your edification, amusement or wastage of time, here is a mishmash of matters – just some stuff going on in my life or going through my head.
a) I just finished reading Seraphina by Rachel Hartman. (Thank you, E. L. Bates, for recommending it!) That is one fantastic book. I’m so glad I only read it just now; the sequel (Shadow Scale) is coming out tomorrow, so I don’t have long to wait for hearing more about Seraphina and her world. I bought the Kindle version, which happens to be on sale at the moment, and then I got a paper copy out of the library because a real book is still so much nicer to read. I’m not going to write a big review; others have done that. But just one point: the book is full of dragons who all have Asperger’s. It’s awesome.
b) Spring has hit in full force, more than a month earlier than we got it the last couple of years. Canada is, literally, polarised right now – while here in the West we’re scrambling to get our rear in gear and start our seedlings, the East is buried under a white blanket. Pretty soon we’ll have to start talking about the East Pole and the West Pole… So on that note, I’ll have to get myself out into the garden today, resurrect the beds from their winter slumber, and get the radishes, lettuces, peas and kohlrabis into the ground.
c) Steve says hi.
Life, the Universe, and Today’s Mishmash. I’ll tell you more when I think of it.
A Paddington Bear notebook my daughter got for me at Paddington Station
So I promised you a post on marmalade, didn’t I? Well, now’s the time. We went and saw the Paddington movie last night, and when can you write about marmalade if not fresh from a viewing of a film starring The Bear With a Worrying Marmalade Habit? (The latter bit is a quote from Mr Brown, the movie version. The one in the book doesn’t seem to be worried about it at all.)
(In case you’re wondering, Steve didn’t come to the movie; they don’t have bears as a category at the ticket counter. Seniors, Children, and Generals, but no Privates, Corporals, or Bears. Also, even though I would have smuggled him in in my purse, he’s a little leery of watching things on a big screen. If you’re six inches high, even a large-screen television can be a little overwhelming.)
So. Marmalade. Oh, the movie was quite good. However, I have to inform you that it presents a quite serious factual inaccuracy: they’re using the wrong kind of oranges for their marmalade. Yup. The movie shows Paddington and his Aunt Lucy making marmalade out of ordinary sweet oranges, the ones you get year-round in the grocery store – you know, navel oranges. How do I know that’s the ones? Because they chop them open, and they’re way too juicy on the inside. No, no, no. Just wrong. Marmalade is made from Seville or bitter oranges, which are a different thing; their flesh is quite dry.
Now, the funny thing is that nobody in my family actually eats marmalade except for me; and I only have it occasionally with a bacon-and-egg breakfast (the bitter taste offsets the grease something wonderful). It’s one of those acquired tastes, and I’ve acquired it in order to be able to feel more British. Well, yeah. It allows me to say “Pass the squish!” like Lord Peter Wimsey, and reminds me of the line in Gosford Park where Mrs Wilson, the housekeeper, asks Mary if her employer couldn’t have strawberry jam for her breakfast: “Only, we’ve run out of marmalade. Dorothy [the stillroom maid] didn’t make enough last January.” And then Lady Trentham (played by Maggie Smith at her most snobbish), the next morning on lifting the cover off her breakfast tray: “Boughten marmalade! I call that feeble.”
Marmalade oranges are only available for a couple of weeks in January – hence the fictional Dorothy’s failings in producing enough for the household; if you don’t make it in January, you’ve missed the boat for the year. And I think that might be one of the reasons I like making marmalade: it’s the one preserve that you make in the dead of winter. The canning jars and rings and lids, the funnel and tongs, all the paraphernalia of canning season, which live in the kitchen all summer long, are put away in the storage room in the basement from October to June. But this one short stint of once again stirring the fragrant amber bubbling away in the big pot, of whirling around the kitchen to get the steaming hot jars out of the dishwasher and ladling the sticky-soft sweetness into the glass, clapping on the lids and then listening for that satisfying little snap when they seal – it’s an unmistakable reminder that even though the snow flies outside, summer’s warmth and harvest will be back.
I don’t have a worrying marmalade habit myself – although I might have a marmalade-cooking habit. And I have friends who are quite happy to support me in that habit by taking the product of my hands – or they say they are, anyway. Maybe they’re just being polite, being English and all? Paddington is a very polite bear – it’s the English way.
Life, the Universe, and Marmalade. Pass the squish.
PS: Here’s the recipe, the short version: 2 lbs marmalade oranges, 8 cups water, 4 lbs sugar. Cut up oranges, take out pips. Chop whole oranges in food processor, boil with water for 1 1/2 hrs together with the pips tied in a little bag. When the orange peels are soft, take out the bag of pips, add the sugar, and boil for about 15 minutes, proceeding like for any other jam. Makes about 8 half-pints of marmalade. (Pardon the imperial measurements – I got the recipe from an older pre-metric English cookbook. Seems kind of suitable.)
I have things I was going to tell you about. Marmalade, and Charles Dickens, and watching the last episode of Season 1 of Once Upon a Time and what I think of it. But we’ll leave that for later, because right now the big excitement is that it’s only two more days until Cat and Mouse is available for actual sale in actual, um, virtual, um, online book stores.
Steve was complaining that he hadn’t had enough screen time recently, so I let him and Horatio model the print copy of Cat and Mouse. He was also complaining that there aren’t enough bears in my writing, and I’m sorry to say this book is no exception. Not a single bear in sight, in this or in Seventh Son. But of course, there’s cats, so that’s where Horatio comes in. Well, a tiger is a cat; so even though there are no tigers in Cat and Mouse, only domestic cats, I thought he’d be a suitable advertising model.
The picture also gives you an idea of the size of those two. Some friends who’ve met Steve in real life were surprised at how small he is. He’s a Gund, only 9″ (22cm) on his tippy-toes, 6″ (15cm) when he’s sitting – but I guess his screen persona comes across as much bigger. He’s a large bear on the inside.
So here they are. Doesn’t Cat and Mouse look lovely?
But there’s one more thing I had to share with you. I just got this awesome comment on my “Clean Air” post from the other day. You know the one where I rant about rude, inconsiderate, pushy salespeople with tunnel vision about their product? Here’s the comment, verbatim:
“it is great to see about air purifier . how many people know about air purifier we should know about air purifier this the mean thing so everybody should know about air purifier you can check about air purifier here [spam link]”.
I liked that comment so much, I left it up, with the guy’s name and links removed (wouldn’t want to risk even the slightest chance of giving him any business from his spam). Gotta love it when spammers make your point for you.
So, just a couple more days, and you can have Cat and Mouse in your sweaty little hands – umm, on your sweaty little Kindles and Kobos and iPhones and computer screens. The hardcopies will be a bit longer in coming; I’ll let you know when I’ve got some on hand for locals to buy from me directly, or you can order it yourself from Amazon US or Europe (Amazon Canada will take longer).
Life, the Universe, This and That and Cat and Mouse. Steve and Horatio say hello.
Apologies for the infrequency of my postings lately. I’ve been hard at work on the third instalment of the Septimus Series. (Wait, you say – what about the second one? Fear not, stalwart reader, Cat and Mouse has been written quite some time ago, and is with my intrepid editor at this very moment. It should be available for your reading pleasure within a couple of months – I’ll let you know when!)
So, meanwhile, here’s a picture for you of Steve beta-reading yet another one of my stories. He’s not the greatest beta reader, because his comments usually just go along the lines of “There’s not enough bears in here,” or “That bear is not believably written.” However, expert opinion on even just one specialty subject is not unwelcome, either. You can be sure that with his feedback, I’ll at least get the bears in my stories right.
However, speaking of beta readers, I could use a few more. So if you’re up for reading a novel or two and giving me honest feedback on it, give me a shout in the comments or send me a mail to amo@amovitam.ca. That’s especially if you’re an appreciator of fairy tales and/or gentle fantasy (by which I mean that it’s not the epic sword-and-sorcery kind – there’s no swords, and the sorcery is quite mild-mannered; as for eps, well, they generally don’t find enough scope for their epping in my worlds).
Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to get back to Catriona – they just hit a cliff hanger which must be resolved in the next chapter.
Life, the Universe, and the Writer’s Life. See you on the other side of the full stop.
Steve’s been giving me a hard time for neglecting my blog. I tried to tell him that I’ve had a lot of business lately, so he said he’d write a post himself. “Fine,” I says, “be my guest!” So here he is, trying his hand at blogging. But he kept fussing around with it, and couldn’t figure out the interface on WordPress, so I finally got fed up and said I’d take over again. He looked rather relieved at that, and has gone back to discussing poetry with Horatio.
So, yes, there’s been a lot of business lately. That’s business as in busy-ness, not biz-ness, you know, with dollars and cents. Figuring out this blog interface thing wasn’t the only issue, although that took a fair amount of time on its own. There’s also been the ongoing harvest – still food to process, dontcha know. I made 18 litres of grape juice from the Coronation grape vine climbing our balcony (32 kg grapes!), and if you’ve never made grape juice, you have no idea of the mess it generates. In fact, I’d never made it in these quantities before, either, and was quite astonished at the resulting blood bath (grape blood, that is). See? And then, of course, afterwards I had to clean it up, too. Grape juice is incredibly staining – one drop on my light beige kitchen counter, and I’d have a bluish spot forever. I did, in fact, have stains all over that counter for years – not just grape juice and other food substances, but rust rings from where someone left a damp cast iron pan sitting on it for far too long. But then sometime this spring I discovered the secret to rejuvenating kitchen counters: BS.
No, not that kind of BS. I’m talking about baking soda. Now, that stuff has been my go-to scouring powder for years, but scrubbing the stains on the counter with it had never seemed to do much. Until I discovered the magic trick: time. You make a paste of baking soda and water, smear it all over the stain, and let it sit for an hour or more. Then you can take a sponge or rag, and with the application of a bit of elbow grease the stains quite simply vanish. Voilà, kitchen counters good as new! Which had me quite excited, back there in spring, because the stains were so bad I had already priced out what it would cost to replace the counters. Several thousand dollars, actually. Yes, ouch. Not really in the budget. But then, with a buck or two (if even) of BS, lovely clean counters.
So there you have it. Grape juice. Blogging interfaces. Apple butter (thereby hangs another tale – I’d never made that before, it’s yummy!). Dried plums, apples and pears. Grape jelly without commercial pectin. Lots of BS to clean up after it. And that’s just the half of it. So, yes, Steve, I’ve been busy. Hope you’re enjoying your poetry discussions; you’ll have to share them with me sometime.
Life, the Universe, and Business. Nothing a little BS won’t take care of.
This is where Steve the Stuffed Bear and I present to the world our unique blend of drivel deep wisdom, random ramblings, the occasional bit of silliness, sometimes a recipe, and occasionally even something that could be construed as profound. So far, we’ve done all this over on a Blogger page, also named Amo Vitam, which is where you will continue to find all our posts from the last four years under its old address. (Have a look around, there’s some interesting stuff [even if we say so ourselves]; and then come back here so you don’t miss anything interesting).
Also on this page you will find, soon, an exciting announcement about a forthcoming event – but I’m not telling you what it is quite yet! Just a couple more weeks though.
And that, for today, is Life, the Universe, and a New Home for Amo Vitam. Glad to have you here!
So here he is, looking dapper in front of my screen. Now that he gets double screen time – in front on my screen, and displayed on yours – hopefully that’ll keep him happy for a while. It’s really hard to write with those bearly grumbles coming from the corner of the room.
