Jennifer Crusie's Blog, page 84

Happiness is Warmth

My mailbox fell over because my mail carrier keeps abusing it by shoving packages in it, so now I have to put up a new one and our low is around three degrees tonight, so when the new one comes tomorrow, I’m going to be freezing out there with my sledge hammer, warmed only by my rage.

Actually, it’s freezing everywhere here, it’s cold inside, too, (old cottage) in spite of electric blankets and extra heaters. I wrote Krissie to bitch about the cold and found out that their high up in Vermont is six below. She said, “They build us tough up here.” I wrote back “Down here, they build us smart enough not to move someplace where six below is the high.”

Happiness is not being where six below is the high.

What made you warm with joy this week?

This is a Good Book Thursday, January 13, 2022

This week I read cookbooks and subtitles (a rewatch of all five seasons of The Art of Crime) but was shamefully low on fiction.

What did you read this week?

Working Wednesday, January 12, 2022

I’m still crocheting like a madwoman, but it’s harder now that it’s colder than hell in NJ. Also still cleaning the house and throwing stuff out like mad, and working on Nita. So, the basics.

What did you work on this week?

Happiness is a New Story in a Series

I was crocheting Friday night and decided to rewatch some Art of Crime episodes. I clicked on Netflix and OH MY GOD THE NEW SEASON IS UP! So I binged the four episodes (short seasons) thinking that Florence is becoming damn near predatory (play fair, Florence) and Antoine must be thick as two planks if he doesn’t see the toxic relationship his fiance has with her mentor or his own buried attraction to Florence. Plus there were the murders. And all that gorgeous art.). Anyway it made me start thinking about series, which I have never done before, and why they’re so happy-making when they’re good (Hello, Murderbot, Person of Interest, Nero Wolfe, Leverage, the Carsington Family, and so many more) and still pleasing even when they’re not as good as we’d hoped. I need to give this a lot more thought, but the bottom line for me was that two new stories in this series made me very happy Friday night. (Also that crocheting while reading subtitles is not recommended.)

What made you happy this week?

This is a Good Book Thursday, January 5, 2022

It’s still weird typing “2022.” Feels like science fiction.

Which I am reading (Murderbot again) because romance is failing me. No, that’s not right, romance is an excellent genre. Some romance authors are failing me. I could go on at length at what makes a good romance (as could all of you), but the bottom line is that you have to know how to write, how to use words not only to best advantage but correctly, for cripe’s sake, and then use them to write character in action, not pages of back story. I’ve been reading Bookbub excerpts on Amazon all week, and the number of times I’ve hit “delete” instead of one-click is high. I could go on, but you want to know what I’ve read that’s been good. Hmmm. Articles about Betty White. And . . . yeah, that’s it this week.

Of course that could be because of me. Sometimes I get hypercritical. No, really, I do.

What did you read this week?

Working Wednesday, January 5, 2022

I’m getting things done the Melinda May way, very slowly but definite progress.
How did you work this week?

Melinda May Can Kiss My (non)Aspirational Plans

My therapist, who is generally a goddess, makes me crazy by quoting Shel Silverstein’s poem about Melinda May and her damn whale. (Don’t get me started on what happened when Jamie (said therapist) made me read The Body Keeps the Score. Her reading lists are from Hell.)

Unfortunately, Jamie and Melinda May are right. The key is to achieving your goals is to keep taking little bites. (Jane also said this yesterday in the comments, which made me think of Melinda May, so she inspired this post, blame her if you don’t like me repeating the theme from yesterday.).

So I’m working on two sampler blankets and enjoying the hell out of them because I only crochet a square or hex a day, just to relax, unless I get into it, in which case, Katie bar the door, we’re crocheting for hours. Plus I’m doing crochet-alongs on Ravelry–one on a different yarn each month and one a scavenger hunt like Park and Shop with hooks and needles. If I don’t do a month, nobody cares. It’s perfect.

And I’m working on something with writing every day, just for fifteen minutes, unless I get sucked in, in which case, I could finally. get these books revised/finished/out the door. But there’s no pressure because people gave up on me producing anything long ago and forgot I existed, so I’m blissfully writing for fun. I got a bag for Christmas that says, “Write Drunk, Edit Sober,” and while I generally don’t drink anything but straight Diet Coke, I consider the writing-off-the-top-of-my-head, don’t-look-down, discovery and recovery drafts the same as Drunk Writing. It’s fabulous.

And the when-I-get-time project I completely abandoned–putting the blog posts back up that I took down after the hack–I’m now looking at doing by rescuing or deleting one draft post a day. There are 2,134 posts in draft stage, so it’ll be awhile, but there’s no rush. One-thousand twenty-eight published, and I could probably get rid of some of them, too. This blog has been around for YEARS, stuff accumulates. The thing is, some of this stuff is really good. Some of it is garbage and can be deleted, but that’s fun, too. Plus if I start going through the Questionables and writing posts, maybe I’ll start organizing that writing book. You know, when I feel like it. It’s not a RESOLUTION, for god’s sake.

And then there’s throwing physical stuff out so we can move through the house again. The dogs and cat would be so grateful. That’s along with all the miscellaneous stuff I put in the Sunday Happiness post. Good times. The important thing is, none of these things are resolutions. They’re plans. They END when the goal is achieved. I mean, not even Melinda May, that little psycho, made a resolution to eat a bite of whale every day for the rest of her life. It just worked out that way.

(I have questions though. How did she keep the whale fresh? What size is her freezer? Did she spatchcock it? Bring a local butcher in to carve it into steaks? I ask because she’s got the denuded skeleton there on her plate, and how did she get it that clean? That’s a lot of bone chewing. Of course, she could have boiled it to make whale broth, but where did she get a pot that size? I call shenanigans.)

So plans. Big plans. No resolutions. We’re not making big life changes, reality is doing that for us. (I’m speaking of me and Veronica and Mona and Emily. That’s not a Royal We.) We will not be biting off more than we can chew and swallow.

We’re just going to be nibbling at kibble and life in 2022. It’s a plan.

Happiness is Plans. Big Plans.

So it’s 2022, and people are making resolutions, and I spit on resolutions because they’re always so grim. Nobody ever resolves to eat more chocolate, it’s always diet this and exercise that and “do more” and somehow that always ends up being “enjoy less.”

I do not make resolutions. I make plans.

The thing about plans is that they’re finite. They’re not “I’m going to eat sadly the rest of this year,” they’re “I’m going to make that 40 clove of garlic chicken people keep going on about.” They’re not “I’m going to sweat a lot more,” they’re “I’m finally going to get my ass to the library and get a card and meet the librarians.” They’re not “I’m going to keep my house so clean nobody will think anybody lives here and nobody will want to,” they’re “I’m going to find what the hell I did with my loom.” They do not harass you weekly with your failings, they give you a sense of accomplishment because they can be finished, preferably in an hour or at least an afternoon.

My plans include:

Getting an electrician in here so that I can get a new fridge (my birthday present to me, I’m so excited).

Focusing on one set of books to start writing next: the three Liz books (probably), Anna/Alice/Nadine (possibly), the Trudy/Courney/Darcy novellas (maybe), the Zo/Cat stories (definitely but not now). And then getting them DONE.

Going through my immense collection of recipes to find the ones that really make me want to cook. This sounds like a drag, but I love reading recipes so it’ll be an orgy of ooohing and note taking.

Making those recipes, and also Chicken Marsala and Vegetable Soup and Stir Fry with Cashews and Chili with Sricha because the classics are always good. Sigh.

Walking the dogs on their new double leash, just for the comedy value. I do not have high hopes this will work, but it should be hysterical finding out.

Crochet my yarn or give it away. This will take years, so I’m in no hurry. It’s a process, not a project.

Finally organize my kitchen. I’m a Virgo; this is better than sex for me. (Okay, not, but close.)

Make my kitchen a laff riot of color and funny but practical stuff, like my Flying Spaghetti Monster colander and my octopus holder (after I got one for the bathroom, it was a no brainer to get one for the kitchen. I can always find my ketchup and mustard now.)

There’s more but it doesn’t matter because they’re plans not resolutions which means (a) I don’t have to do them and (b) they end, gloriously, with me having had a good time AND accomplishing something.

Oh, and also;

Eat more chocolate.

Your turn. Tell us your resolutions if you must and we’ll support you, but really, do you have some great plans? YES, tell us those. Fuck resolutions.

Happy New Year, Argh! It’s 2022

I figured you’d want a place to revel in the fact that it’s not 2021 anymore. I’m lifting a glass to you all right now. It’s Diet Coke, but it still counts.

Here’s to a great new year!

This is a Good Book Thursday, December 29, 2021

I bought myself a book for Christmas. It was expensive and unnecessary (although I told myself it might work into the Haunting Alice book) but I ignored the practical and went for the beautiful. It’s titled Alice: Curiouser and Curiouser, and it starts with pages and pages of gorgeous Alice collages and then goes into the history of how Alice came to be written, how the story has been translated to the stage and screen, how it’s inspired art and fashion, all of it copiously illustrated with photos and drawings. It’s a wonderland of a book about a wonderful book.

What did you read this week?