Helen Mathey-Horn's Blog, page 15

A Day For…

Soup I think. It is raining gently. Leftovers from the hurricane in Texas I expect. But it is so soft and gentle and needed. The temperatures are mild and it feels like an Indian Summer fall day. Time for soup.

I have the corn, the cream, the onion. No potato or bacon, but I suppose I could skip those parts.

Ever have one of those days you just want to pull the warm afghan up and either read or stare out the window? Yep, one of those days.

Look at that tangle of goldenrod! If it weren’t raining it would be covered with bees. I’ve also found the cat hiding under the arch of branches, hoping birds will land near by. Right now she is on a chair cushion on the porch. A much drier perch with a good view.

If I didn’t like the ‘look’ so much, I would cut it and use the flowers for dyeing.

Not like I don’t have enough projects.

Hope you are having a cool, relaxed day.

And if I could I would share my rain with the West Coast.

918 Day

I posted on this day last year also.

What is 918 Day? Well today is September (9) 18th and the phone area code for Tulsa is 918…ya got it?

Hurts Doughnuts knows how to celebrate.

Also seen

I think I found my candidate.

Sorry I can’t remember what the small print said. I’ll go past later and check it out again.

6 Words

New York Times suggested you write six words that define you or you feel during the pandemic.

An even more abbreviated than a haiku?

Burning world…physically…politically…toss’em all.

Click on the New York Times above to see others.

Who would you?

Who would you want as a writing partner?

The awesome co-hosts for the September 2 posting of the IWSG are PJ Colando, J Lenni Dorner, Deniz Bevan, Kim Lajevardi, Natalie Aguirre, and Louise – Fundy BlueT

This month’s writing prompt is: September 2 – If you could choose one author, living or dead, to be your beta partner, who would it be and why?

Andre Norton – without a doubt. She was one of the first sci-fi writers I read when I was about 6th grade. Her worlds and people are so real. She is still a major influence on me to this day.

I have also read the following: Anne McCaffery, Marion Zimmer Bradley, some Ursula K. LeGuin, and Mercedes Lackey. I did not forget the men; Heinlein, Asimov, Clark, Dick.

But, I still think Andre Norton was the one who influenced my world building the most. And looking at her list of works I realize I really haven’t begun to have read all her works! I hope I might be so prolific.

Here is a link to a site that will give you more information and a list of all her titles.

Others comments on this month’s prompt. his month’s writing prompt is: September 2 question – If you could choose one author, living or dead, to be your beta partner, who would it be and why?

Click on the badge should take you to other comments on this month’s prompt.

How ?

What happened to August?

Some how I’ve missed this month. There are still hummingbirds at the feeders and I have seen a stray monarch butterfly or two so it is not completely fall, but…

Here we are and tomorrow is September and most places school has not started or is online…poor parents and teachers…and students. Flexibility is the name of the game.

And for all the time I’ve had at home, I feel like I wasted it. Perhaps I’ll feel more like getting things done in September. I’m not a goal setter, at least not putting them out in public. Maybe the problem is too many choices for what I want to do and not focused on getting one or two done. And then again right now everything still seems on hold.

Happy Fall?

Signs of Summer

Hummingbirds have found my feeder. They are shyer than the ones that used to come to my parents’ feeders. Mom would put up feeders in Illinois and when they were at their trailer in Wisconsin she would get some ‘syrup’ made for there also. Both places the birds were almost brazen and easy to watch. Here I have to keep a sharp eye and just was able to see one using the feeder in the middle of the back garden.

From last year

I also saw a Monarch on the wing today and it was headed South. I should go down to the Arkansas River and see if the monarchs are using the wildflowers along the banks as I’ve seen them do in the past. I am glad I saw it and I’ll double check my milkweed plants to see if I have any eggs or larvae, but it feels like a sign of the end of summer. Normally school in Oklahoma would have been back in session about a week now. I’m retired so that marker of the year doesn’t have a pull on me anymore, but the Monarchs leaving does.

The Naked Ladies are almost through flowering around town, another sign that the season is changing. It all makes me a little sad. A few nippy days and nights would be appreciated I suppose, but too soon it will winter. Granted winter here is not as gloomy as winter in the North, so if I have my druthers I’ll take here.

How do you react to the change of seasons?

Dang, another deadline missed!

I like to take part in the Insecure Writer’s Support Group writing prompt on the first Wednesday of each month, but if you check the date on this you will see…yup, as they say, ‘A day late (2) and a dollar short.’

So without further delay…the prompt,

“Have you ever written a piece that became a form, or even a genre, you hadn’t planned on writing in? Or do you choose a form/genre in advance?“

I’m kind of ‘free-style’ in my writing as I often think I know where the story is going, but it sometimes takes me to unexpected places and with details I’m not expecting. “Oh, it’ll be one story,” morphs into a whole world with future stories and back stories and side-stories and where will it end?

I thought I started out writing fantasy, but by a few quirks of ‘fate’ the series has really turned into sci/fi-fantasy…darn how did that happen? Partly it happened because my husband wanted to write a sci-fi book but use a couple of my fantasy characters…well why not. It’s all words and they can be anything I(we?) want them to be. And partly it happened because…world-building/backstory…how did we/they get here? Where do you call a stop to what happened before the story you’ve just written. I guess that question of motives (isn’t that what a backstory is setting even if it is generations back?) intrigues me and then I get lost.

Okay, stop already.

I’ve been so busy…not

Like everyone else, we’ve been home. And home. And home.

Who knew you could get cabin fever in July?

I garden some. Mostly it will look like watering and with the temperatures starting to crank up as August approaches it will be more watering.

I cook/bake some, as little as possible. I love to bake, but who wants to heat up the house this time of year. Maybe crusty bread loaf tomorrow?

I’ve been knitting socks. I’m about to complete another pair for my husband with his long feet. The color of the yarn is interesting or else I would have quit a while ago on them. I’ve also been hand winding skeins of yarn into balls of yarn. Yes, it takes forever and the yarn is very likely to tangle in the process, but what have I got but time….time…time.

Watching PBS daytime shows…so many sewing, painting and cooking shows. The last makes me hungry, but not enough to start cooking beyond basics.

I’ve started rereading the Agatha Christie mysteries we have around the house. There are two different sets of them so maybe 30 books total. I feel like Henry Fonda’s character “On Golden Pond”, “They’ll all be new to me.” I seldom remember who did it, except “Murder on the Orient Express”, lol.

We’ve eaten out, a few times, but at the same restaurants with outside seating.

We’d like to take a driving tour of a few of the States we’ve not really seen, but…yeah…who knows when.

Sorry, to be so dull, but… I should post pictures of the socks just for something new. Or perhaps the Surprise Lilies.

Like many things, here today and gone tomorrow.

Time to go knit some more socks, or wind some more yarn, or bake another loaf of bread, or…

What do you remember about your Grandmother’s House

This is a 3 on Thursday prompt. And as I’ve kind of fallen off the map I guess I better do some writing.

The grandmother I’m named for had a small house on a big city lot. She spent a lot of summer days outback at a picnic table under a huge tree. I think it might have been a sycamore tree. If she was working on anything she could take out there, it went out to be done in the fresh air. I don’t know if it was a throw back to her farming days or just pleasanter out there. Grandma had a pull out dough board built into her kitchen counter. Now days that might be found in a high-end custom kitchen, but I suspect it was the norm for houses built pre-depression era. Not sure when that house was built. She made all kinds of dough things on that board, from kolaches to a doughnuts made on New Year’s Day for good luck.She had a fantastic ‘stand’ of forget-me-nots and other plants around the house. I think she could grown anything. She had a garden at the back of the lot, again probably hold-over from farming and economics of being self-sustaining.

My cousins probably all have other memories of Grandma’s house, but these are my 3 for Thursday.

No pictures. Wish I had one.

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Urban Nightmare?

The June writing challenge is “urban nightmare”. What if your ‘life’ isn’t your own and someone shows you a potential way out? This is a small section from Uptimers where our heroes run into such a group.

            Chuck sat at his desk and ran the calculations again.  The numbers came up the same.  Well, they should, he thought.  “Hey, Ed, what did you get on tolerances for the number three part?”

            From the next cubical a voice fed him back the same answer he had.  “Yeah me too.”  Chuck pulled at the white collar on his shirt, wishing again he could at least loosen the tie even if he wasn’t allowed to undo the top button.  He knew better than that.  That’s what had made George disappear.  He wasn’t going to let a little thing like that slip him up. 

            He stood up to stretch and pushed his glasses up a little higher.  Chuck let his gaze look around the room.  It was divided like a hive into numerous smaller cubicles with office partitioning that allowed visual privacy as long as you were seated and kept your head down.  There was none at all from a standing supervisor.  Over the tops of the putty beige dividers he could see the tops of similar balding heads.  Here and there was the glint off thick glasses as someone looked at him.  Only a few murmurs floated on the air as cubicles exchanged data.

            Most of the heads were male.  Dotted among them were a few females, their hair pulled back in the regulation bun.  If they were pretty, their faces were coated under make-up to make them look drab.  It was a struggle for a couple of the younger ones. 

            No one had seen a supervisor in a long time, but everyone knew they were watching.  The office had figured out a few tricks to give them a heads up when a visit was expected, so the workforce wasn’t as edgy as it used to be about unscheduled inspections, but keeping the hive appearance was standard coloration by now, and no one was willing to risk the group’s project by being ‘different’. 

            Chuck sat down and went back to work.  He had stood long enough; another ten seconds and it might have been noted by the monitors that the supervisors thought were disguised in the corners.

            “Hey, Ed?”

            A mumble came from the next cubicle.

            “You and Doris want to come over this weekend?”  Chuck always invited them over.

            “What are you having?” asked Ed.

            “Steak.”  They always had steak.  And potatoes.  And salad.  Chuck wasn’t sure he could stand much more red meat.

            “Yeah, we’ll come,” said Ed.

            Then both men stopped what they were doing and looked up.  Over the tops of their partitions heads were prairie dogging up all over the office.  Chuck took a quick look at the monitors and hit a button under the edge of his desk.  That ought to wipe out a few minutes of snooping.

            The double swinging doors at the end of the office had opened and in had walked a tall dark-haired woman in a hot pink jumpsuit.  She didn’t wear any makeup.  Shit, she should have been.  The mouths of the single guys and even a few married men dropped open.  She had a black purse in one hand and a metal cylinder dangling at her trim waist.

            As the occupants of the nearest cubicles stumbled forward in a daze, the door opened again, and a very tall redhead in a similar pink jumpsuit walked in.  Chuck got himself in gear, stuffing his pen in his pocket.  He better intercept this crew before it made a shambles of their work.  He looked down at his white shirt and noticed the pen had leaked ink on the bottom of his pocket.  Damn these useless pens.  He straightened his tie and walked forward as men in a yellow, a pink, and finally a red jumpsuit walked into the office.

            “You must be here about the maintenance,” Chuck said, quickly dragging the girl by the arm down the hall to the special room.  The other occupants nodded at Chuck as he passed and went back to work.  The buzz was a little louder than normal.  Chuck frowned, hoping it was still within tolerance.

            He got them into the room, closed the door and said, “What the hell kind of stunt you trying to pull?”  He loosened his tie.  He nodded through the door’s window at Ed who took up a position at the water bottle across the hall.  “You like to explain yourselves?”

            “You’re the Nerds,” said Nivens in awe. 

Chuck got a pained look on his face.  “Socially challenged we prefer, if you’re going to label us at all,” he said sharply.

“No problem,” said the one in the red suit.  He sported a nasty black eye.  That had been what decided Chuck against their being supervisors pulling some trick.  Lee pulled out a cigarette and began to light it.  Chuck frowned.  “Is there a problem?” asked Lee

“It’s supposed to be a smoke-free office.”  Lee put the cigarette away.  “So who are you guys?”

“Maintenance?” suggested Lee.

“No,” said Chuck, “But not management.”  He pointed at their jumpsuits.  “Union?” he asked hopefully.

“You have a union?” asked Nivens in surprise. 

“Let’s say we’ve got an underground one started.  One of these days management is going to be sorry they stuck us here with antiquated equipment and only a few cute chicks,” said Chuck, whacking his slide rule against the palm of his hand, a fanatical gleam coming into his eyes.

“So you planning a breakout?” asked Lee, professionally curious.

Chuck just smiled.

“You need information?” asked Lee, looking at his cigarette package longingly.

Chuck looked at the cigarettes and then at the door.  He gave Ed thumbs up.  Ed strolled casually through the office, stopping at random cubicles.  Soon the office network would spread the word.  “Let me have one, and then tell me what you want in return.”

Chuck took a deep drag on the cigarette and blew the air back out slowly.  It was the little subversions he enjoyed the most.  Like smoking in the office.  Even if it had to be in the special room he and the others had built. 

“So what’s up,” he asked looking at them.

“We’re travelers,” began Lee cautiously.

“Time travelers,” corrected Chuck.  The group exchanged startled looks with each other.  “Look, we represent some of the best minds the defense department has…had.  We may be nerds, but we’re not stupid.  First thing we built on the sly was a tracking system.  Nothing approaches this planet we don’t know about.  When the supervisors showed up without setting off any alarms, it didn’t take us long to figure they were using wormholes or something like them to cut through the space-time continuum.  So?”

“We’re time travelers,” said Lee.

“Can you give any good information on the conditions outside this Hellhole planet?” asked Chuck.

Lee looked at the quiet office and the busy heads working away.  Through windows he could see green trees and a sunny blue sky.  “Sure can.  Can you give us a quiet space for about six hours?  Then we’ll be out of your way.”

Chuck nodded.  He pushed an intercom next to the door.  Ed showed up.  “Ed, I’ve got to take these maintenance workers home so they can fix my washing machine.  You’ll have to dock me half a day’s pay.  I’ll try to make the hours up tomorrow.  Come by later, and we can share a few beers.”

Chuck led the way down monotonous corridors and punched out before the double doors leading to the sunny parking lot.  He loaded them all into his VW van and drove carefully home, two blocks.  His house was set back from the street by a perfect green lawn sans weeds.  His neatly clipped shrubbery came to just beneath the picture windows in front.  He pulled in the driveway and left the keys in the ignition.  No one stole anything here, he thought bitterly.

             Chuck dug steaks out of the chest freezer.  Not like he had a choice of meats he reflected.  He had switched to something more comfortable, shorts that shouted Waikiki in red lettering on a palm tree background, a plaid shirt open at the front, and white socks with his brown loafers.  Supervisors didn’t care what you wore at home, and the more outlandish, the happier they seemed to be. 

He had let Lee, Clint, and Nivens raid his wardrobe.  Lee was in Levi cutoffs with a tee shirt.  Clint had on red swim trunks and flip-flops.  Nivens had ended up in chinos and a polo shirt.  The other couple had disappeared into his guest room and didn’t seem to be coming out.  Kind of a shame thought Chuck, wanting to girl watch a little more. 

With their protective clothing in place to fool any watching supervisors, he had led the way to the backyard patio to grill the meat.  He had quizzed Lee for information and was pleased with what he had learned.  They were comfortably drinking beers and shooting the bull when the other couple returned.  Chuck looked around and decided he could safely let maintenance workers have a beer and supper without setting up any red flags on some desk in another solar system.

“So how you going to break out of here?” asked Lee, offering Chuck a cigarette.

“We’re building a wormhole,” said Chuck.

Nivens looked up in surprise.  “Really?”

“If they can do it, we can too.  Almost have it ready to test.  We just don’t know where to go to, and we aren’t interested in becoming fried in the center of a sun.”  Chuck turned the meat.

“We could share a few co-ordinates with you,” said Lee, taking a swig on his beer. 

“Mighty neighborly of you,” said Chuck, taking off his glasses and throwing them in the general direction of the house.  “If you can give us our co-ordinates and a few local stars, I think we can work out the rest.”

“What are you going to do?” asked Lee.

“First, get off this stinking Hellhole,” said Chuck with controlled anger.

“It doesn’t look that unpleasant to me,” said Nivens, feeling the clean breeze against his cheek.

“It’s okay the first year, but when you can’t go anywhere or do anything that isn’t in the specifications, it’s enough to make your blood boil.”

Lee thought about Nu Texas and nodded.

“Then, maybe we’ll play the switcheroo and see how those supervisors like being stuck in Eden for eternity.”  Chuck had the fanatical gleam back in his eye. 

He looked at Teryn then looked away.  “So what are you guys up to?”

“We’re looking for someone uptime who’s been messing with us,” said Lee.

“Anything we can do to help?” asked Chuck.

“Know what this is?” asked Lee, pulling the white metal wafer from his pocket.

Chuck took the metal card.  He shook his head and said, “Don’t know.  Looks like a security pass or key card to me.”  The four men exchanged quick looks.  “I’d have to run some tests, but that’s my gut instinct.” 

Lee turned to Teryn.  “You said numbers?”  The woman nodded.  “Could it be codes?”  Teryn thought about it and nodded again.  Lee smiled.  “Thanks,” he said to Chuck, taking back the card and putting it away. 

“Hell, that wasn’t worth much,” said the man.  “I think we owe you more than that.”

Lee looked at the others then shrugged and answered,  “Well, we do have a place and time for uptime.  If you get your wormhole working and want to join in the fun, you could meet us.  I’ll leave you the co-ordinates.”

“Any girls?” asked Chuck looking away from Teryn again.

“About fifty-one percent of the population.”

“You’re shitting me!” said Chuck, startled into spilling his beer.  “Goddamn supervisors.  Wait until I tell the others.  That’ll light a fire under this project.”  Chuck disappeared indoors to use the phone.

One of many adventures our ‘heroes’ face. The entire book is available on Amazon.

To see others’ responses to this prompt go to Write…Edit…Publish.