If God had intended us not to masturbate he would've made our arms shorter. --George Carlin

Hey, I’m up north and my wireless still works! YEY! I wasn’t sure that it would and I didn’t plan on writing another entry this week, but my friends have gone to work and it just doesn’t feel right to start the day without an entry.

I made it up here all right last night. Felt good to drive and not go to Mount Pleasant. I have nothing against the place, but its not like it’s a great town to spend time in. And I’m still giving college the middle finger. I might like the place better when the finger joint curls up again.

Zip is having a great time with the other dogs here. Two black labs and they give him a run for his money. All three of them have a love affair with tennis balls, so it actually can get a little violent on occasion. I’m surprised that my momma’s boy dog usually comes out top dog. I never pegged him for a dominant. Currently, all three dogs have settled down after nearly tearing the house down playing this morning. The female lab is snoring, the male is passed out, and Zip is laying on my feet, making sure to growl menacingly should the other dogs get too near my bags. See? I raised a good son. ;-p

So I plan to spend the day doing tractor and equipment research for Taylor. She knows this shit, I don’t. And pick some brains when everyone gets home. If I knew what I needed to ask this would be so much easier.

I forgot to mention the other day that prior to The Computer Freeze, I’d managed to kill two MP3 players and we have our doubts as to whether the toaster will pull through or not as it remains very touch and go. (Kidding.)

So. Until Monday kids. And I promise I'll find someone else to quote next week.

I have as much authority as the Pope, I just don't have as many people who believe it. --George Carlin

Gotta love George Carlin. Thanks brainyquote.com!

Some days it ain’t the block that gets ya, it’s the technology. I started editing yesterday, only to have my computer freeze for twelve hours. It just shuts down, goes to a glowing, pre-start screen, and sits there, with the fan running, until I get pissed, unplug it, and let the battery run down. Then I can start it… twelve plus hours later.

Needless to say, I was not a happyhappy Ax.

But I did get a lot edited on paper and some scenes sorted out. Surprisingly, I exed out an entire 2 pages and it felt really good. The rewrite is a lot stronger.

Today started out better. So far (keep your fingers crossed) no big computer issues and I’m not high off cleaning products. I’m the only person I know who gets a contact buzz from Pledge. Throw some toilet bowl cleaner and Lysol in the mix and I’m laughing like an idiot. Not that that is much different than normal… but hey. In all seriousness, I’m just really sensitive to cleaning products, fly repellant, herbicides and pesticides. They spray the corn and I get a sore throat. Get the idea? And since I got into some fly repellant last summer, I’ve been really bad around cleaning products. Not sure of the correlation and its probably all in my head, but that’s nothing new.

Tentatively heading up north tonight to visit friends and (ahem!) picking their brains on farm mechanics. I don’t know a piston from my left shoe, but they do. Hey, some people interview cops or doctors for their novels. Not me. I interview John Deere experts. It’s only a bonus that they happen to be my second family.

A last word on edits: I’d read interviews with bestselling authors who said the editing process was the worst part of writing and I thought at the time “oh, how bad can it be?” Let me just say, that it’s worse. But rewarding too in some sick and twisted way.

I’m going for lunch.

Happiness is something we create - Sugarland

(not my cows, by the way.)

Got 12 pages of Taylor edited yesterday. YEY! But I hit a snag with one of my villains. So I went back and did a character worksheet, did some research on psychological traits/ disorders that this character has, and viola! This morning I have a whole new perspective on him and how he and Tay interact and why. That’s why I love this writing process. I keep getting surprised!

I started reading Kim Harrison yesterday, speaking of getting surprised. 200 pages into The Good, The Bad, The Undead and I can’t put it down. Harrison and Hamilton always make me late, as if it is a physical pain to put down the book. I think both authors need rehab clinics for those of us waiting on their next books. Or we just write our own (see myself).

Aside from Kim Harrison, I read my butt off yesterday. Stanley Coren, Line of Beauty by Alan Hollinghurst, Anne Bronte’s Tenant of Wildfell Hall, Ariel by Sylvia Plath, and an humor erotica book called Bad Sex. With a name like that, I just had to read it.

So today its housework, in between edits and rewrites. I’m a very physical writer. If the writing isn’t going well, I get up, get out, and do something, either clean or take a walk or go to the farm. Just something. It clears my head and I come up with great, wondrous ideas that I have no way to write down and escape as soon as they enter my head. But, it gets the block moved, one goddamned block at a time.

Weather forecast for tonight: dark. --George Carlin

Got ten pages of Taylor edited yesterday. YEY! I can’t believe how slow edits are going. I’m only forty pages in too. That’s almost halfway, I guess. Its 97 pages, so only fifty-seven to go. (Groan.)

Finished Stanley Coren’s book How to Speak Dog this morning. Only been working at that for three months or so. That book actually inspired me to write Taylor. I became intrigued with the idea of a person with an innate ability to communicate with all manner of animals. So I suppose I have Mr. Coren to thank. Aside from my other reading, I’m continuing to read his work, embarking next on Why Does My Dog Act That Way?

I wrote down what I got done yesterday. I guess I could note my plans for today. See if I actually get anything done, lazy ass that I am. I need to get the rocks and steel posts picked up at the farm, walk the cattle fence in the thorn apples, do my workout, read 25 pages in my books, and get at least ten pages edited for Taylor. Reasonable goals I think. Laters.

Barclay, Ax Barclay. Resident cattlewoman/minion.

Doesn't quite have the "Bond, James Bond" ring to it, does it? Oh well.

I got to be a farmer yesterday. Well, a cattle/horsewoman. Its only May and we’re already low on grass, no thanks to the drought last summer. Grass is short, but growing well over the septic tank, and hay is even shorter. So after we rode horses (Zip even came, YEY!), Dad and I fenced the thorn apples so the cows would have something to chew on. They love it back there. It’s like turning kids out onto a playground they’ve never been on before. “I wanna go down the slide! Wee! I wanna play in the mud puddle!” It’s craziness.

The glory of not having school this next week, or ever again, hasn’t faded yet. I’m still all relaxed and happy, letting my stories percolate in my head, fondling them the way one might examine precious gems, holding each idea up to the light, then letting it slip through my fingers like a minnow. Edits on Taylor are going so very slow. Its seems that I get a good start, 30 pages in say, then either hit a snag or get called away. I need to just buckle down and do it, but I need to do a lot of things. Like clear the rocks in the lane, take cans back, mow Gram’s lawn, do the spring cleaning, get up north before things get crazy doing hay, put in my garden… it never ends. But, hey, I got dishes and laundry done this weekend and got the cows fed for a day or two.

The guy who leases our property for corn and soy beans is farming today. The soil finisher is going over the field right now, moving on down the road, and they’ll be through to plant corn in the next few days. Guess summer really is here in full-force. Damn it all.

I done gradgiated

Graduation ceremony last night. It lasted FOREVER! Oh well, it’s over now and I got to hang out with my second family, so that was awesome. And I made my grandma happy by going, so I did my good deed for the week. If I make one person happy a week, I’m doing good. Everyone else is so screwed until, like, Mother’s Day.

I should be walking around the house in a daze today, depressed and moaning that an era of my life has ended, I have nothing to live for, etc, etc. But I’m relieved more than anything. And, best yet, ideas are percolating again. Like ideas to write, not just stories I tell myself in my head. I’m relaxed and happy, for the first time in a long time, content just to do laundry and dishes, thinking about fixing dinner, making plans for the garden, and rubbing Zippy’s tummy (he’s laying under my desk again, helping me work).

The truth is, I hated college. I mean, I loved working with Dr. Blake on my senior project and I liked reading and learning new things, but the truth is, I can do that on my own. Always have. I can do it better now, but as far as all those friends and experiences that they talk about having in college, I could care fucking less. My best experiences were always at home or on the farm and my biggest learning experiences came from personal life, not institutions. That was why I wasn’t one of those kids up there getting service awards and all that bullshit—because I had, and always will have, a life outside of college. I think that’s what makes my writing so good; I’ve lived instead of just gone along with the rest of the class. What scares me after reading Jodi Picoult’s Nineteen Minutes is that if I had gone along with the class, or been forced to, I might have been the shooter instead of the student. Instead, I write. And I’m here, on a fine spring morning, with my feet on my puppy’s tummy.

The Ax has graduated.