Social Fail... Horse With Two Names... And Lunar Madness...

I went shopping last weekend... I hate large crowds... I don't do retail... I can't stand the commercialization of any otherwise special holiday... but I got my shopping done (nothing big, just little somethings for close family, useful things) and I didn't smear any sorry excuses for humanity. Actually, I can't say that I even saw any sorry excuses for humanity. Although there were hoards of folks out shopping, every single person I was near acted like a reasonable, kind human being. I'll take that as an early Christmas present. Gotta say that I still hate the crowds though. I think that if I didn't work outside the home (ahem, as in I was able to write full time) I would actually enjoy going out and people watching. But since I monger all my free time, I loathe having to share it with the public. Social fail. Of course, Sirens and the like don't fall into this category...

And speaking of Sirens, I've been doing a lot of looking at myself and my writing recently. I guest hosted on Christi Corbett's blog last week about keeping your writing dream alive and what the query process has been like for me thus far, and then I got a couple of rejections in a row. Normally those roll right off, but I was hoping to at least get a request for the ms, even if that ended in a rejection. Getting flat form rejections based on a query only, or query and the first five pages somehow feels like taking a few steps backwards. I even caught myself singing 'All I want for Christmas is an agent to rep me...' more than once. Meanwhile, I was putting up hay in preparation for some winter weather. This is something I do every winter. The same way. Every time. It goes like this: Drive into the field. Line up truck to back into the paddock (the paddock is too small to drive in forward and turn around) Get out, open paddock gate. Chase three horses and a donkey out of the way. Back into paddock. Open hay get. Back up farther. Unload hay. Drive off. Got it? Easy, right? Except that EVERY SINGLE TIME Horse With Two Names leads everybody into the paddock and into my way and I have to chase them away. EVERY TIME. You might remember Horse With Two Names. I wrote a short story about her that was published locally which you can read here. So anyway, this year, Horse With Two Names got a blanket. She's never had a blanket before. She's always wanted one. So finally I gave her one. Now she can still be a wild little horse, but a warm wild little horse. I put the blanket on her. She pranced around, so very proud and pleased. Then she led everyone into the paddock, right into the way of my pickup truck. So I shooed them all out. Horse With Two Names tore a$$ out of the paddock in her oh-so-lovely-new-blankie and around the front of the pick-up where she crashed and burned like a miniature recreation of United Flight 232. Sierra, who was right behind her, landed on top of her, and Dixie plowed into him. J.D. the donkey avoided involvement. Everyone was fine. But Horse With Two Names managed to scrape and scratch and dirty up that blankie she'd been so excited to get. Which got me to thinking. I don't want to crash my agent (when I get one) the way Horse With Two Names thrashed her new blanket. Sometimes we want something so bad that when we finally get it, we do something stupid or thoughtless and immediately damage whatever we were so happy to finally get. So, now that I've got another query out... I'm going to practice meditation and being calm, maintaining focus on the craft. Otherwise, I might get an offer to rep, only to have nothing but blanket burn to show for it...

And while I'm on the subject of crazy madness, did anyone else stay up and watch the eclipse? (No, not the Twilight Eclipse, the REAL one) I set my alarm and got up. It was hazy but I saw most of it. Nice, since the next one like it won't happen until like 2095...