Category Archives: blogging

Irony in my Diet

Posted on February 4, 2013 by mohawkvalleygirl

So there I was, writing a post about a walk on a Sunday, and it was DULL. The walk itself was not dull. I love to walk, especially with my cute little dog.

But just because something is enjoyable does not mean it is interesting to read about. This is particularly true in fiction, by the way. In fiction, you want your characters to have one problem after another. Conflict! That’s the ticket!

Am I going to have a Wrist to Forehead Sunday post lamenting that I don’t have enough problems? That’s right up there with not watching a movie because it’s a good one! I guess you can’t say Mohawk Valley Girl does not get enough irony in her diet (is that double negative an awkward construction?).

I really, truly meant to write a real post today, not another one about Why I Can’t Write a Post. Then again, unlike walks, I seem to find an infinite variety in my excuses not to write. Wait a minute, isn’t writing about not writing yet another irony?

Come to think of it, I did have one small problem on my walk. Tabby pooped right near Meyers Park. I scooped up the poo, with a decent amount of snow, and contemplated the distance to the trash can. I was walking down the street hoping to meet Steven as he drove home from work. If I walked to the can to throw away the poo, would I miss my husband, thus rendering the walk useless and annoying?

I chanced it. I walked slantwise to the can, keeping an eye on the road. Was that him? No, that was a truck. Was that him? No, that was a white SUV. Was that little car him? No, it was maroon. I made it back to the sidewalk! Success!

Steven was late leaving work. We walked all the way down to State Street then back home without encountering him. It was not ironic. It was unfortunate.

And now my question, gentle reader is, which part of the post was more dull: the story of an actual happening or the dithering about why I couldn’t write today? Discuss amongst yourselves.

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In My Defense, I’m Still Sick with a Cold

Posted on January 30, 2013 by mohawkvalleygirl

So there I was, with a perfectly innocuous Miss Marple movie I could write a blog post about, yet I was writing about a rather unsavory dream I had. My object was not psychoanalytical in nature but to disprove the notion that the ideas you wake up with in the middle of the night and forget are actually any good anyways.

This was when I realized how unsavory the dream actually was, and I thought, “Wait a minute! My mother reads this blog!”

This would make an excellent introduction to a discussion on self-censorship and how we really can’t worry about whom we offend. Look, I understand the Let It All Hang Out school of art as well as the next exhibitionist. But I also agree that for some things, there is a time and a place.

The place for my dream (oh, all right, it involved body parts and probably not in the way some of you are thinking) (you know who you are) is in my notebook, safely disguised by my messy handwriting, till I re-write and edit it till I feel it is ready for public consumption. Or it will stay in the notebook and rot while I go on to write something else, having learned what I can from that bit of nonsense.

So you can stop shaking your superior artist fingers at me. I read Writing Down the Bones. I know all about first thoughts and practice writing. I just don’t think I have to post every damn thing I write. Unfortunately, since I like to post something every day, I post a lot of what I write that perhaps some people think would be better off left in said notebook. Well, think what you like.

As my headline said, I am still suffering from a head cold. I’m fuzzy, I’m unhappy. I will cease to inflict myself upon you. Let’s try for Miss Marple again on Wednesday.

Side note: Writing Down the Bones by Natalie Goldberg, in case you’ve never heard of it, is a very interesting book about writing and creativity. I recommend it.

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Snapshots of a Weekend

Posted on January 28, 2013 by mohawkvalleygirl

It is not Wrist to Forehead Sunday. For one thing, with the cold I am suffering, I am completely disinclined to move my limbs at all. I raise my hands to the keyboard. That’s as far as they go. Oh, well, occasionally as high as my nose, but that will give you a nasty mental image, so let’s not go there.

Where was I? Ah yes, in need of a blog post. I can just see some of you shaking admonitory fingers at me. How many foolish posts about not writing a post can I get away with, you are asking me in righteous indignation.

I seem to remember saying people could shake their fingers, their heads or their groove things at me and welcome. I thought it was a clever line at the time. Imagine my chagrin when I heard the song and in fact it is “Shake your booty,” not “Shake your groove thing.” Well, shake what you like. How about Shake’n’Bake for dinner? After all, feed a cold.

So I thought I’d mention in passing a few little things I did this weekend. Saturday I watched a movie called Crack-Up, which I had DVR’d back in October the same day I DVR’d Prehistoric Women, which I seem to remember writing kind of a fun post about (I’m not flattering myself here, it was indeed fun for me to write; I only hope it was also fun to read). Crack-Up was not nearly as fun or cheesy, but I don’t despair about finding something to say about it sometime.

For Saturday night dinner Steven called one of our favorites, Salvatore’s in Herkimer, NY. We got Greens Salvatore and Zitis with tomato sauce. Yum! So prompt of delivery, too. This time I held onto Tabby so she could not personally greet the delivery person, much to her chagrin. It was such a good dinner, I thought it not inappropriate to give them another plug. You can go to the Salvatore’s Herkimer Facebook page for a link to their website.

Gee, that’s only two snapshots. Oh, what do you people want from me? I took a couple of naps, talked to a sister on the telephone, made some silly comments on Facebook, finished knitting a scarf. I felt grateful to not have to leave the house.

So there you have it, another blogger’s sick day. Let’s hope for better health and better writing tomorrow. Happy Sunday, everyone.

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In Case of Emergency, Hit Publish

Posted on January 27, 2013 by mohawkvalleygirl

Sometimes coffee is not the miracle one is hoping for.

Full disclosure: This is a Middle-aged Musings post I’m writing with no real plan as to when to post it. I thought it might be useful to have a spare column kicking about, in case of emergency.

It is Monday as I write this. Many people do not sleep well Sunday night. I’m one of them. One can temporarily overcome the deficiency with coffee. Coffee also has mood-boosting properties, which I, for one, find welcome. Sometimes not so much.

Well, at my age (middle), one does not lightly abandon an old friend after a disappointment. Besides, it still tasted good.

My second musing for the day is: sometimes the Write It Anyways philosophy works. I wrote a whole post on Saturday about how I could not write a post about my intended topic. I felt even worse on Sunday but was too embarrassed to admit it could happen to me two days in a row. The result was perhaps not brilliant but perfectly acceptable.

A small side note about the post: my sticking point was the first sentence. I wanted something less mundane than “We went here and did this.” And I felt quite incapable of going on to the second sentence and writing the first one later. Sunday, I accepted the mundane. There’s some half-baked philosophy lurking around there somewhere, but I’ll save that for Lame Post Friday.

Getting back to the Write It Anyways school of thought, I drove to work this morning feeling dry as a bone, writing-wise. I was even composing in my head a lead of “Sorry, kids, it’s Middle-aged Musings Monday.” Then when I sat down with my notebook (I had some time before I had to start work), I thought I would just try to write about a local business we had recently patronized. It worked!

So what have we learned here? I’m going to go out on a limb here and say, “Not much.” Like coffee, sometimes Do It Anyways works and sometimes it does not. And the next time it doesn’t work for me, now I have a spare column.

Side note after I typed this in: Regular readers may remember I mentioned this column yesterday, saying that I had not typed it in. So today I in fact had to type it in and not just hit Publish. Still, I thought it was too good a headline to waste. My only regret is that now I don’t have a spare post any more. Guess I saw that one coming.

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At Least I Wrote Something

Posted on January 20, 2013 by mohawkvalleygirl

So there I was, having Wrist to Forehead Saturday. A full blown case, too. Oh, I was being pathetic. It was embarrassing. The thing was I could. Not. Write. A. Thing.

I had a lovely Mohawk Valley adventure to write about. Failing that, I had taken not one but two walks with my schnoodle, Tabby. Always acceptable for a Saturday post. I understand the Write It Anyways philosophy. I got out my notebook. I found a pen. I wrote a sentence and scribbled it out. I could not think of an alternative.

“This NEVER happens to me!” I wailed. I had wailed it about thirty-eight times (in my head, of course; I didn’t want to scare the dog), before a little voice in my head said, “Don’t be silly; it happens to you all the time. That’s why you have so damn many lame posts.”

Well, I believe my theme yesterday was “Things Happen.” Or, as the case may be, Things Don’t Happen. In this case, writing the post I had intended to write is not going to happen.

In the alternative, let us briefly consider the Write It Anyways philosophy. I know, half-baked philosophy is for Lame Post Friday. However, since some do not consider this philosophy half-baked, I will make bold to compose a paragraph or two. For one thing, I do not want today to be the first day in over a year and a half that I don’t make a blog post.

Most professional writers acknowledge that you can’t wait for inspiration to strike. If you wait till you are “in the mood” to write, you will write very little. Indeed, I have found in my own experience that most of the time, if I just pick up the pen (or pencil, or put my fingers on the keyboard, if we must be literal as well as literary), words will appear.

Oh, it’s fun when they do. One of my favorite things is, it gets so they appear more easily and regularly. It’s true! Since I’ve been writing the blog, I do spend less time staring at a blank piece of paper. I spend less time staring into space thinking about writing. It’s kind of like running: the more you do it, the more you are able to do it (no, I haven’t started running again, let’s not open THAT can of worms!).

Um, slight disclaimer here: unlike running, it is not as easy to be good at writing. If I keep putting my feet down on the ground one after the other, I will get someplace and I will get there increasingly quicker or go increasingly further. If I put more words on the paper, I will be able to put increasingly more words on the paper, but that does not mean they will be any more interesting for others to read.

Case in point: this post.

On the other hand, if I start to worry about my every every word being deathless prose, I will surely write fewer words. The write-it-and-scribble-it-out disease happens because there is that voice in my head saying, “That’s not good enough” (I’m not sure if it’s the same voice that said, “It happens to you all the time,” but it’s a pretty good bet). Today I said to myself, “It doesn’t have to be brilliant, it just has to be written.”

And now I have written over 500 words. It might be foolish, but it is a blog post. I’ll work on making it brilliant tomorrow. And I will write about our trip to the Capitol Theatre in Rome, NY for a screening of Rear Window (preview of coming attractions). Um, I’m not promising that will be brilliant, but I’ll work on it.

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New Year, Same Old Me

Posted on January 2, 2013 by mohawkvalleygirl

First a correction from yesterday’s post: We did not tape Santa Claus Conquers the Martians from TCM but from AMC. AMC, at that time, was a delightful destination for us, showing many features with directly interested us. Now I fear they cater to a different demographic. TCM is our go to cable source for movies, which accounts for my mentioning it by mistake.

I take so long making the correction because, as has become deplorably common these days, I don’t have much. It’s kind of a dull, no brain day for me. In my defense, it’s New Year’s Day.

I actually did not party particularly heartily last night. I didn’t even stay up till midnight. I was watching the TruTV marathon of World’s Dumbest Partiers, so I may have gotten a contact buzz. Or would that be placebo effect? The power of suggestion?

In any case, I’ve spent most of the day watching some fairly creepy things on another cable channel I discovered called Chiller, with my unwritten blog post hanging over my head in a threatening fashion. I know, a dedicated blogger would have turned off the television, picked up a notebook and Written That Post.

And here we come to the ugly truth about me.

It is the last day of my four day weekend, so it is like a Sunday, and you know what that means. Wrist to Forehead Sunday!

I bet some of my readers are hoping I make a New Year’s Resolution to write fewer lame posts. Well, I strive always to improve. I did have a nice breakfast at Crazy Otto’s Empire Diner yesterday that I may write about tomorrow.

In the meantime, I am educating myself. The current feature on Chiller is Can You Survive a Horror Movie? Already I’ve gotten some useful tips on how to survive a zombie attack. Their experts don’t offer much hope for being buried alive, however.

The hosts of the show are willingly putting themselves in horror movie situations. Perhaps in 2013 I can do that myself with some of the cheesy horror features I review. I wonder who I can get to be Bela Lugosi.

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I Plan to Be Spontaneous

Posted on December 29, 2012 by mohawkvalleygirl

After yesterday’s silly post, I feel a little sheepish having Lame Post Friday. However, since I got nuthin’ else, I’ll see what I can come up with.

I did have one thought about my Friday Lame Post. As I prepared to drive to work early this morning, I wondered what I might find to write about during the course of the day, since I arose this morning with nothing. Then I remembered a comment on another Friday Lame Post, advising me that one could not be random on a schedule. I had to acknowledge the truth of that statement, then the little devil on my shoulder said, “Today I planned to be spontaneous.”

Well, that is just the kind of oxymoron I enjoy (being all different kinds of moron myself). I’m only sorry I can’t come up with more of them for this post. However, let’s get on with my planned spontaneity at least.

Have you ever noticed, when somebody says, “I hate to rain on your parade,” it is almost always a lie. They LOVE to rain on your parade! They think it’s great that they know something that you don’t and it will ruin whatever you were planning/hoping/thinking. And, you know what, it’s usually not even a parade anyways. It is often something very mundane and by calling it your parade they have disparaged you twice. Or am I being too sensitive?

I just remembered that I had been going to philosophize half-bakedly on why I wanted to repeat myself in yesterday’s post. I sure do hate to rain on anybody’s parade who was waiting for that. Just kidding! I actually felt very mean for putting that, but I kind of also felt like I had to (come to think of it, that might be something else to philosophize about, half-bakedly, of course).

To set the record straight, I was going to repeat myself yesterday because I couldn’t think of anything else to say. Hmmm… not very philosophical, was it? Perhaps Pouring My Art Out was right and one can’t philosophize on cue.

By the way, that was who commented, pouringmyartout.wordpress.com. I really don’t spend enough time reading other blogs, because, you know, some of them are really cool.

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Can’t Give You Anthing But Lame

Posted on December 22, 2012 by mohawkvalleygirl

What a dithery week I’m having.

I had meant to continue my Christmas Carol Commentary today. I even had a couple of paragraphs written. I thought, “Don’t do Lame Post Friday right after Non Sequitur Thursday.” And here it is Friday and it seems I can’t be anything but lame.

I have said in the past that I don’t suffer so much from Writer’s Block as from Writer’s Blank. My head feels like a big, empty wasteland. Well, today I think it’s Block. My head feels like a concrete wall. Nothing is getting through.

Possible reason for this phenomenon:

I got some “likes” for my posts earlier this week, and at least one new follower. What if they read my next post and DON’T LIKE IT AS MUCH? What a disaster!

Oh, I know it’s not really a disaster and logically, nobody will like each post equally as well as all others. But I think many writers can identify with the fear that we will not be good enough. After all, better to be silent and let the world think you’re a fool than to write a blog post and remove all doubt.

Actually, I guess that ship sailed with the first post: everybody knows I am something of a fool. I might postulate that most writers are fools: we put our words out there and think somebody, somewhere might want to read them. And you know what, maybe we’re not such fools after all. I like to read what people write. I’m thinking you do too, because, you know, here you are.

One of the best excuses for a lame post is, at least it’s short. Happy Friday, everyone.

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Skip the Futzing

Posted on December 18, 2012 by mohawkvalleygirl

I thought that by instituting Middle-aged Musings Monday, I could take it easy on Monday. Kind of like I take it easy on Friday with Lame Post Friday.

Then I started thinking: Wrist to Forehead Sunday, Middle-aged Musings Monday, Mid-Week Musings, Lame Post Friday, Running Commentary Saturday and the newly discovered Non Sequitur Thursday (I know that puts them out of order, but I wanted to mention Thursday last). Am I writing a Mohawk Valley blog or am I just futzing around?

I guess today I’m futzing. I did not write a post on break at work. I wrote about a page on my novel that will probably end up being quite unusable, if I even finish the novel, which at this point looks doubtful.

Now it sounds like Wrist to Forehead Monday. OK, everybody, just put away your miniature violins, I’ll stop.

As a matter of fact, I dragged Steven and Tabby on a walk just now, thinking I could write about that. It was cold but not too bad. I had attempted a walk with Tabby on Sunday while Steven was at work and it was quite uncomfortable. We made it around one block and that was enough. Tonight’s walk was further and quite enjoyable.

I pointed out to Steven every Christmas decoration I noticed. Then I noticed myself doing that and apologized for being annoying. Steven didn’t mind. He really is a very good husband. Tabby, of course, wanted to stop and sniff almost every post, tree and patch of grass possible. We try to strike a balance between letting her enjoy herself and not taking all damn night about it.

At one point we could hear footsteps behind us so tried to pick up the pace a little. That is a noise that can sometimes make you nervous, especially after dark, but Herkimer is usually a pretty safe place, and for heavens’ sake it was prior to six p.m., not the witching hour (that may be a run-on sentence but I think it’s OK). Then I heard a car next to us click like somebody had used a key fob, so I figured that was footsteps’ car.

As we approached our house I heard wheels behind us, so looked back once or twice. If if was somebody on a bicycle I wanted to get out of the way. It was a lady with a stroller.

“Snowy! Snowy!” the kid in the stroller yelled.

“Every white animal isn’t Snowy,” the lady told him.

I turned around. “No, this is Tabby,” I said. Usually Tabby would want to meet the kid at this point, but we were in front of our house and she was into being home. The lady explained that her mother has a white cat named Snowy, so her boy thinks every white animal must be Snowy. We wished each other a good evening and she continued on her way while the little boy kept yelling for Snowy.

I asked Tabby if she wanted to change her name to Snowy, but she did not seem interested. Steven was pleased that we had walked for almost a half hour. As for me, I have written some 500 words and that almost always makes me feel better. Let that be a lesson to me: next time, skip the futzing.

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Desperate Times Call for Lame Measures

Posted on December 8, 2012 by mohawkvalleygirl

If ever I was in need of Lame Post Friday, today is the day.

For those of you just tuning in (I know I say this almost every week, but I believe I do occasionally have new readers), Lame Post Friday is the day I let myself off the hook with random observations and half-baked philosophy. It’s actually reprehensible of me, because I let myself off the hook on many occasions: Middle-aged Musings Monday, Wrist to Forehead Sunday, Non Sequitur Thursday (although I’ve only had one of those so far). Even Running Commentary Saturday is a little, dare I say, lame.

In my defense, I don’t always use these handy little hide-behinds. If I have something to write about, I write about it. In my further defense, I sometimes get a lot of “likes” on these silly posts.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: if I’m going to post every day, some of the posts are going to be lame. One might argue (you know, that one that’s always ready to argue. I hate that one): so don’t post every day! Wait till you have something to say! I think I’ve had that argument in this space before. So sorry to repeat myself.

It is pouring rain out (random observation #1). This is sad news for me and for the blog, because I was going to go to a tree lighting in Weller Park in Mohawk tonight. It would have made a great post tomorrow (or do I flatter myself?)! Hmm, guess it’s time for some half-baked philosophy about how it’s OK, because…

I got nuthin’. This is it folks: a short post, one random observation. I’ll do one thing. I’ll save this as a draft and post it after I eat. Maybe something will occur to me while I dine.

NOTE: Nothing occurred to me. But I did have some Heidleberg Bread, baked right here in Herkimer, NY from local ingredients. My Mohawk Valley Girl cred survives.

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