Hottest: wishful thinking

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It’s still hot. It’s not even shimmering heat – it’s just curl up and die heat. Our garden is not faring well – but it’s a good day to wash and dry an old and much loved teddy.

So what else can you do on a hot day? Catch a free train – unless it’s canceled. Wash the kitchen floor with buckets of water and kids. And do lots of wishful thinking.

I looked for the coolest places on earth to run away too. I think Sooke Harbour House on Vancouver Island in British Columbia looks like my kind of place.

sookeharbourhouse

I might run away and take one of those ocean view rooms, watch killer whales, check out the art gallery, walk by the water, sit by an open fire, soak in a bath (guilt free – Lots of water in BC), eat at the organic restaurant, drink good wine and all that stuff. Now that would be a place to write a novel! They have a blog – maybe they need a blogger in residence. Hmm. Well regardless, it’s going on our list for our fantastical Cross Canada Adventure in five year’s time.

And because I know we are heading up to 43ºc some time this afternoon, I am going to spend time checking out the website for the Ice Hotel in Sweden.

icehotel

Mmm. Chilly.

Anyway, back to reality. I am off to have an icey pole for lunch.

What are you wishfully thinking about?

Hottest: links

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It’s going to be a hot few days.

Just before I get to the enormous task of digging a house into the ground under the floorboards, Coober Pedy style, so that we can survive Melbourne’s hottest week for 100 years (4 days above 40ºc / 105ºf), I thought I would post a few links.

The first is one I found via one of my favourite blogs Dancing with Frogs. It’s especially for bloggers and it’s nicely said.

Keri reminds us to embrace the season – while the quote from Rick Bass is all about Winter in Montana, it made me stop and think about how much I whinge about Summer and instead perhaps I should try loving it. Hmm, not likely, but I am going to stock up on the watermelon and the icy-poles and try not to be quite so grumpy. Maybe it’s even siesta season if only Lily would agree.

1000 Novels Everyone Must Read – at the Guardian. You know, there are tonnes of these kinds of lists but I quite like how this one is broken up into categories; War & travel (interesting combo),  Science Fiction and Fantasy, State of the Nation, Family and Self, Comedy, Crime and Love.  Reader’s recommendations are going to be published next month. 

February’s a-coming.  Shutter Sisters One Word project. (via Pip) I am not a photographer. Frankly, the idea of taking nice photo freaks me out a bit but I like the idea of this project. It might force me to think about photographing things in a different way.

Tomato

tomatoes

We just gorged ourselves on a home-grown tomato salad. Unfortunately, they weren’t grown in our home, but my Mum and Dad’s. Above is our entire tomato harvest for this year so far nestled in the palms of Amelia’s not very big hands. There are more ripening on the vines, but not a lot. I think there’s something in that old adage that vegetables need full sun, good soil and lots of water. Hmmm, who woulda thunk it? I will try that next year. We might even lash out and get that long spoken about water tank – that will make vegetable gardening all the more satisfying. I seemed to have lost my gardening mojo for this season. I always start off the Spring with such good intentions but life, and weeds, seem to get in the way. Maybe I need to break out a ukulele tune for the wandering garden muse too.

my creative space…

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Kirsty’s “On my desk” has evolved into “My Creative Space” for 2009. 

Kirsty says; “Each Thursday I’m going to post an image of what’s in progress either on my desk, in my spot, on the sofa, desktop, at the kitchen table…whatever. If you’d like to play along & find some new blogs along the way then you just need to post & then pop into my creative space post for the day & paste your post URL into the auto link widget…”

I thought I might too.

This morning I was cooking a cake in my pjs ready to take out to morning tea at a mate’s, and Amelia came into the kitchen and said; “Huh? What are you doing in the kitchen?” – and I said “making a cake!” and she said, “Wow, every thing’s topsy turvy today – Lil’s playing with my tamagotchi, I’m not watching tv, you’re in the kitchen, cooking“… so you can see that obviously I have not been doing a lot in the kitchen lately, unless you count sitting at the kitchen table with my lap top.  My creative space for the last 22 days has been in my head, on my laptop at the kitchen table amongst the crayons and the breakfast plates, and after the kids are asleep, curled up under the quilt banging out trash at a furious rate. It’s still all about the writing. Above you can see my work in progress. That’s my big folder of bits of paper and stuff which I actually never really look at, and that’s my lap top which I love to pieces, and on the screen you can see my  novel’s outline, which I have just discovered needs a drastic rewrite. All the motivations aren’t working, my protagonist is a walking contradiction. And I thought this novel writing would be easy. Well, actually I never did think it would be easy – and now it’s living up to expectations.

Some useful things I found yesterday while I was in the dumps:

- Hack your way out of writers’ block at 43 folders

- How to write a novel in 100 days or less (which is not what I am trying to do but it has 100 interesting points about novel writing.)

Find more creative spaces at kootoyoo.

Ukulele playing for my wandering muse

Slow writing day. I’m hating it today. It’s like pulling taffy or walking around with chewing gum stuck on the sole of my shoe.

I just need to remember that feeling this way is mostly because I was up in the night with a bed wetting child, and a tv which had the inauguration on every channel and then there was so much hope in my head I couldn’t get back to sleep. Or something. I tend to start worrying that even though I have been writing like a writing-demon for the last 20 days and hit the 48, 906 mark last night after the kids went to bed, the Muse has now left me for greener pastures.

So instead. Please enjoy a ukelele tune, because that always makes me feel better. Danielle ate the Sandwich is pretty cute. Perhaps the ukulele is just the thing to tempt the Muse back home again.

*** Also – lovely Sooz is heading up to Darwin for six months this year and is looking for a house – can you help? Are you interested in house swapping for a gorgeous place in Melbourne? Let me tell you, I am tempted to move to Darwin just so I can house swap back to Melbourne to be in Suzie’s house. Pass it on! (I’m imagining a new crazy movement starting of house-swapping craft bloggers… that would be cool. You’re welcome to take my place but don’t make me clean it!) ***