Victoria Zigler's Blog: Zigler News, page 170
January 23, 2015
Charlie Fletcher's top reasons why we need stories
The following was originally posted on http://www.theguardian.com/childrens-books-site/2014/aug/05/top-ten-story-tips-childrens-books-charlie-fletcher
~~~***~~~
"The author of the Stoneheart series and Far Rockaway reveals his top 10 reasons why we need Vitamin S: the power of Stories."
***
Smart people try and tell you that what makes us so successful as a species is thumbs, those nifty opposable digits that let us grip tools and make stuff.
They're wrong: what makes us the most successful – and dangerous – species on the planet is the fact we tell stories. It's how we communicate, it's how we make sense of the world, it's how we learn, how we teach and it's even (and here's the kicker) how we cheat mortality: storytelling is how we project what we know and feel forward in time, way beyond our life-span. The hardware that was Will Shakespeare is long gone, but we've been downloading the software he created, all his stories, ever since.
We are not just the tool-users: we are Story Machines. We run on what I call Vitamin S: the power of stories. Here's my unscientific and entirely personal list of ten benefits you can get from liberal and regular doses of Vitamin S.
1. Empathy enhancement
Dragon Shield by Charlie Fletcher
When you read a book or hear a story, you do this interesting thing of rubbing alongside the minds of both the narrator and the characters. You walk a mile or more in their shoes and you come to experience things through their eyes and feelings. This develops empathy, that sense of feeling with someone (unlike sympathy, which is feeling for someone). It enables the development of "Theory of mind", the capacity not only to ascribe mental states (like beliefs, intents and wants and so on) to oneself but also to go on from that to realise that other people have beliefs, wants, and intentions that are often different to ours. This is a Good Thing.
2. Creative muscle building
Reading or listening to a story is not a passive thing; it's active and creative. You participate, you don't just sit there and consume something pre-packaged. The words are cues that stimulate your brain into making images in your head. Input Vitamin S and your brain becomes a mini movie studio with unlimited resources. The more you exercise that capacity, the more creative you become.
Seeing someone else's filmed version of a story just isn't the same thing: people whose day jobs involve them wiring other people's brains up to monitors (they do exist) have noticed that watching a movie or a TV show kind of flatlines brain activity. There's a reason we say we are "vegging out" in front of the telly. In technical terms it actually impedes cognitive development and decreases brain connectivity, whereas reading fiction increases it.
3. World ownership
Following on from point two: do the creative work in your own head and you are taking ownership of the stories. They become part of the fabric of who you are. I – like you – am Spartacus. But I'm also Scout Finch and Davie Balfour and Phillip Marlowe and Jane Eyre and David Copperfield and Bilbo Baggins and – on my best days, Granny Weatherwax or Sam Vimes.
4. Time travel
Vitamin S can take you anywhere in time, from the earliest days of pre-history to the moment before the heat death of the universe. Historical fiction helps us understand where we came from, while Speculative Fiction allows us to imagine where we might be headed – or even where we might like to get to.
Speculative fiction is not necessarily great at producing precise roadmaps to the future, but it is good at waymarking potential directions. Imagining futures is important, because if we don't have that sense of direction and intent, the only thing we can be sure of is that we'll end up somewhere we didn't plan to be.
5. Magic making
Read a book and you're a willing participant in a magic trick. I'm badly paraphrasing Alan Moore here, but a magic spell is the right words in the right order leading to a change in consciousness: exactly what good writing achieves.
6. Strong language
Charlie Fletcher, Far Rockaway
Speaking of the power of the right words in the right order... I'm not sure about doomsayers who warn language and verbal skills are threatened as we inexorably turn into a bunch of screen-poking digital grunters, virtually social but mumblingly inarticulate back in meat-space, but stories expose us to other people's ways of expressing things, and in doing so builds our own store of language and keeps it fresh.
It's just not fair to leave that poor Will Self to do all the heavy lifting in this area: there are great underused words out there that we should be keeping alive, like jobberknowl, or bumbershoot, or even fletcherizing. Which is something to chew on...
7. Joining the escape club
There's something refreshing about escaping the tyranny of daily life and getting lost in a story, but it's not only that it takes you out of yourself. Well-crafted Vitamin S has a beginning, a middle and an end. That coherent shape is not always apparent in the real world, where we're always in media res, too committed to the wood to step back and see the trees.
This kind of escape isn't about irresponsibly running away: it's about trying on a different set of perspective goggles.
8. Fun
Story is a form of play. I think play is something we forget to do enough of as adults. Play keeps the mind loose and limber, and young in all the good ways.
9. Thinking dangerously
Reading outside the box and pushing yourself outside your normal comfort zone can have tremendously good effects. For example, a while back I read Little Brother by Cory Doctorow because I wanted to see if it would be good for my kids. Turned out it was good for me too, and raised my consciousness about all sorts of things like the surveillance state and fanned out from there.
10. Silo breakout
This last one's a personal bugbear: forget wild swimming, wild reading is where it's at. Wild reading is picking a book you might not like and giving it a go, because Story not only takes you out of yourself, it pushes you beyond your comfort zone. Nowadays that's more important than it used to be, because the digital world really likes to pigeonhole you so it can fix you in a specific set of marketing crosshairs.
Once upon a time the internet was a free-ish place. Now, not so much. Nowadays it reads you and plays you back to yourself. Check into the same websites with and then without Private Browsing turned on and see what a difference that makes: Amazon will suddenly not offer you options exactly like the ones you last browsed, other websites will stop showing adverts for things you recently looked at and become much more random.
Speaking of random, I joined The Random Book Club while I was at the Wigton Book Festival. Try it or something like it: wild reading will bust you out of the comfortable and unchallenging silos the digital masters have prepared for you, and let you tour the wider horizon beyond their increasingly controlled domain.
~~~***~~~
"The author of the Stoneheart series and Far Rockaway reveals his top 10 reasons why we need Vitamin S: the power of Stories."
***
Smart people try and tell you that what makes us so successful as a species is thumbs, those nifty opposable digits that let us grip tools and make stuff.
They're wrong: what makes us the most successful – and dangerous – species on the planet is the fact we tell stories. It's how we communicate, it's how we make sense of the world, it's how we learn, how we teach and it's even (and here's the kicker) how we cheat mortality: storytelling is how we project what we know and feel forward in time, way beyond our life-span. The hardware that was Will Shakespeare is long gone, but we've been downloading the software he created, all his stories, ever since.
We are not just the tool-users: we are Story Machines. We run on what I call Vitamin S: the power of stories. Here's my unscientific and entirely personal list of ten benefits you can get from liberal and regular doses of Vitamin S.
1. Empathy enhancement
Dragon Shield by Charlie Fletcher
When you read a book or hear a story, you do this interesting thing of rubbing alongside the minds of both the narrator and the characters. You walk a mile or more in their shoes and you come to experience things through their eyes and feelings. This develops empathy, that sense of feeling with someone (unlike sympathy, which is feeling for someone). It enables the development of "Theory of mind", the capacity not only to ascribe mental states (like beliefs, intents and wants and so on) to oneself but also to go on from that to realise that other people have beliefs, wants, and intentions that are often different to ours. This is a Good Thing.
2. Creative muscle building
Reading or listening to a story is not a passive thing; it's active and creative. You participate, you don't just sit there and consume something pre-packaged. The words are cues that stimulate your brain into making images in your head. Input Vitamin S and your brain becomes a mini movie studio with unlimited resources. The more you exercise that capacity, the more creative you become.
Seeing someone else's filmed version of a story just isn't the same thing: people whose day jobs involve them wiring other people's brains up to monitors (they do exist) have noticed that watching a movie or a TV show kind of flatlines brain activity. There's a reason we say we are "vegging out" in front of the telly. In technical terms it actually impedes cognitive development and decreases brain connectivity, whereas reading fiction increases it.
3. World ownership
Following on from point two: do the creative work in your own head and you are taking ownership of the stories. They become part of the fabric of who you are. I – like you – am Spartacus. But I'm also Scout Finch and Davie Balfour and Phillip Marlowe and Jane Eyre and David Copperfield and Bilbo Baggins and – on my best days, Granny Weatherwax or Sam Vimes.
4. Time travel
Vitamin S can take you anywhere in time, from the earliest days of pre-history to the moment before the heat death of the universe. Historical fiction helps us understand where we came from, while Speculative Fiction allows us to imagine where we might be headed – or even where we might like to get to.
Speculative fiction is not necessarily great at producing precise roadmaps to the future, but it is good at waymarking potential directions. Imagining futures is important, because if we don't have that sense of direction and intent, the only thing we can be sure of is that we'll end up somewhere we didn't plan to be.
5. Magic making
Read a book and you're a willing participant in a magic trick. I'm badly paraphrasing Alan Moore here, but a magic spell is the right words in the right order leading to a change in consciousness: exactly what good writing achieves.
6. Strong language
Charlie Fletcher, Far Rockaway
Speaking of the power of the right words in the right order... I'm not sure about doomsayers who warn language and verbal skills are threatened as we inexorably turn into a bunch of screen-poking digital grunters, virtually social but mumblingly inarticulate back in meat-space, but stories expose us to other people's ways of expressing things, and in doing so builds our own store of language and keeps it fresh.
It's just not fair to leave that poor Will Self to do all the heavy lifting in this area: there are great underused words out there that we should be keeping alive, like jobberknowl, or bumbershoot, or even fletcherizing. Which is something to chew on...
7. Joining the escape club
There's something refreshing about escaping the tyranny of daily life and getting lost in a story, but it's not only that it takes you out of yourself. Well-crafted Vitamin S has a beginning, a middle and an end. That coherent shape is not always apparent in the real world, where we're always in media res, too committed to the wood to step back and see the trees.
This kind of escape isn't about irresponsibly running away: it's about trying on a different set of perspective goggles.
8. Fun
Story is a form of play. I think play is something we forget to do enough of as adults. Play keeps the mind loose and limber, and young in all the good ways.
9. Thinking dangerously
Reading outside the box and pushing yourself outside your normal comfort zone can have tremendously good effects. For example, a while back I read Little Brother by Cory Doctorow because I wanted to see if it would be good for my kids. Turned out it was good for me too, and raised my consciousness about all sorts of things like the surveillance state and fanned out from there.
10. Silo breakout
This last one's a personal bugbear: forget wild swimming, wild reading is where it's at. Wild reading is picking a book you might not like and giving it a go, because Story not only takes you out of yourself, it pushes you beyond your comfort zone. Nowadays that's more important than it used to be, because the digital world really likes to pigeonhole you so it can fix you in a specific set of marketing crosshairs.
Once upon a time the internet was a free-ish place. Now, not so much. Nowadays it reads you and plays you back to yourself. Check into the same websites with and then without Private Browsing turned on and see what a difference that makes: Amazon will suddenly not offer you options exactly like the ones you last browsed, other websites will stop showing adverts for things you recently looked at and become much more random.
Speaking of random, I joined The Random Book Club while I was at the Wigton Book Festival. Try it or something like it: wild reading will bust you out of the comfortable and unchallenging silos the digital masters have prepared for you, and let you tour the wider horizon beyond their increasingly controlled domain.
January 20, 2015
Yua And The Great Wizard Hunt
Yua And The Great Wizard Hunt
Genre: Children's Books - Fairy Tales And Fables plus Readers/Chapter Books
Synopsis: "When Yua the talking West Highland White Terrier fails to stop his master, Gwydion, from being wizardnapped, there’s nobody to help him look for his lost wizard. That is, until he meets Lattie; a small girl with a big heart, and a secret she didn’t even know she had.
Why was Gwydion wizardnapped? What is Lattie’s secret? Most importantly: can a small dog and a little girl answer these questions and rescue a wizard all by themselves?"
Published: 20th January 2015
ISBN: 9781310698811
Buy it from Smashwords: http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/...
Available elsewhere soon!
Get 80% off this book on Smashwords by entering coupon code ZG28A at checkout; coupon expires on February 17th 2015.
Yua And The Great Wizard Hunt - officially released
"When Yua the talking West Highland White Terrier fails to stop his master, Gwydion, from being wizardnapped, there’s nobody to help him look for his lost wizard. That is, until he meets Lattie; a small girl with a big heart, and a secret she didn’t even know she had.
Why was Gwydion wizardnapped? What is Lattie’s secret? Most importantly: can a small dog and a little girl answer these questions and rescue a wizard all by themselves?"
That's the synopsis for my latest book "Yua And The Great Wizard Hunt" which is officially released today!
I don't usually put detications or anything in my books, but this one is dedicated to my beloved Westie, Castellan Keroberous. Kero was the inspiration behind Yua, and died soon after I started writing this book. So I felt it was right to deticate it to him.
Anyway, you can buy the book from Smashwords in all formats they offer, as well as from many other ebook retailers.
Why was Gwydion wizardnapped? What is Lattie’s secret? Most importantly: can a small dog and a little girl answer these questions and rescue a wizard all by themselves?"
That's the synopsis for my latest book "Yua And The Great Wizard Hunt" which is officially released today!
I don't usually put detications or anything in my books, but this one is dedicated to my beloved Westie, Castellan Keroberous. Kero was the inspiration behind Yua, and died soon after I started writing this book. So I felt it was right to deticate it to him.
Anyway, you can buy the book from Smashwords in all formats they offer, as well as from many other ebook retailers.
January 15, 2015
Random ramblings - January 15th 2015 (FD)
It's been over a month now, and my tooth still hurts!
I'm waiting for a hospital appointment to go and have it out - and my upper wisdom teeth, which came through with cracks and have broken (one worse than the other). It should have just been fixable without doing that, but it's got a couple of fillings in it that mean attempts to sort it will probably just result in the tooth breaking and needing to be pulled, so we might as well skip to pulling it out. But, of course, it can't be straight forward... Being anemic means I have to go to hospital to have it done in case I lose too muchh blood and end up needing a blood transfusion. That shouldn't happen, but better safe than sorry, right?
Anyway...
The dentist says the appointment with the hospital will take as long as it does, and to remember that hospitals have waiting lists.
Well, duh! *Rolling eyes*
I've dealt with hospitals enough in the past that I don't need telling about that, thanks!
I was kinda hoping that knowing I was in pain would make the dentist tell them to hurry it up as much as possible.
Apparently not.
*Sigh*
I'd go to Accident And Emergency, but I know from the radio that if they decide your case isn't urgent they'll just send you home these days. I'm not sure of full details, but it's something to do with how far behind they are on the time it takes to see patients. The whole thing sounds stupid to me, to be honest. I mean, doctors and dentists take ages to see you, and if it's not so seriously urgent you have no choice you're not allowed to go to Accident And Emergency to be seen... So, you do what? You just have to suffer while they take who knows how long to see you? Sounds to me like having their paperwork look good matters more than the patients these days.
In the meantime, a combination of pain killers and camomile tea is bearly keeping the pain in my tooth to a level I can tolerate; bearing in mind, I have a very high tolerance for pain as a rule.
I've been eating a lot of oatmeal and mashed potato; soft foods aren't quite as painful to eat.
***
The rats needed a bigger cage than the one we got them, so we ordered them one about two and a half weeks ago.
When it arrived it was broken, so we arranged to have it picked up, and a replacement sent out.
After several phone calls, we FINALLY got our replacement yesterday!
The girls love it... But then, it's a little more than twice the size of their old one, so why wouldn't they?
***
I got "Isabelle's Runaway Racehorse" pre-released. So, now I have three books already pre-released for this year:
"Yua And The Great Wizard Hunt" is coming out next week. It's a story about a talking West Highland White Terrier rescued by a wizard when he was thrown out by his old owner, who later teams up with a little girl to find and rescue the wizard who took him in.
"Rodent Rhymes And Pussycat Poems" is due out in February. This one is a short collection of poems for and about my rodent gang and Cara the kitten.
"Isabelle's Runaway Racehorse" is due out in March. It's the story of a racehorse who becomes jealous when another horse moves in to his stable and takes some of the attention from him. He decides to run away in search of a home where he'll get the same attention he used to get before the new horse came along.
And, I have plenty more books planned!
One of the books I've been working on is almost ready to be pre-released; it just needs the final edits and a cover.
My main focus with writing now though is on the four book series I'm working on about a faerie dragon named Zeena. I'll tell you more another day though... Probably when I've completely finished the first book in the series.
I say "my main focus" because I dare say I'll do bits and pieces towards other books while working on that series. After all, I usually have a few things on the go at once.
I'm waiting for a hospital appointment to go and have it out - and my upper wisdom teeth, which came through with cracks and have broken (one worse than the other). It should have just been fixable without doing that, but it's got a couple of fillings in it that mean attempts to sort it will probably just result in the tooth breaking and needing to be pulled, so we might as well skip to pulling it out. But, of course, it can't be straight forward... Being anemic means I have to go to hospital to have it done in case I lose too muchh blood and end up needing a blood transfusion. That shouldn't happen, but better safe than sorry, right?
Anyway...
The dentist says the appointment with the hospital will take as long as it does, and to remember that hospitals have waiting lists.
Well, duh! *Rolling eyes*
I've dealt with hospitals enough in the past that I don't need telling about that, thanks!
I was kinda hoping that knowing I was in pain would make the dentist tell them to hurry it up as much as possible.
Apparently not.
*Sigh*
I'd go to Accident And Emergency, but I know from the radio that if they decide your case isn't urgent they'll just send you home these days. I'm not sure of full details, but it's something to do with how far behind they are on the time it takes to see patients. The whole thing sounds stupid to me, to be honest. I mean, doctors and dentists take ages to see you, and if it's not so seriously urgent you have no choice you're not allowed to go to Accident And Emergency to be seen... So, you do what? You just have to suffer while they take who knows how long to see you? Sounds to me like having their paperwork look good matters more than the patients these days.
In the meantime, a combination of pain killers and camomile tea is bearly keeping the pain in my tooth to a level I can tolerate; bearing in mind, I have a very high tolerance for pain as a rule.
I've been eating a lot of oatmeal and mashed potato; soft foods aren't quite as painful to eat.
***
The rats needed a bigger cage than the one we got them, so we ordered them one about two and a half weeks ago.
When it arrived it was broken, so we arranged to have it picked up, and a replacement sent out.
After several phone calls, we FINALLY got our replacement yesterday!
The girls love it... But then, it's a little more than twice the size of their old one, so why wouldn't they?
***
I got "Isabelle's Runaway Racehorse" pre-released. So, now I have three books already pre-released for this year:
"Yua And The Great Wizard Hunt" is coming out next week. It's a story about a talking West Highland White Terrier rescued by a wizard when he was thrown out by his old owner, who later teams up with a little girl to find and rescue the wizard who took him in.
"Rodent Rhymes And Pussycat Poems" is due out in February. This one is a short collection of poems for and about my rodent gang and Cara the kitten.
"Isabelle's Runaway Racehorse" is due out in March. It's the story of a racehorse who becomes jealous when another horse moves in to his stable and takes some of the attention from him. He decides to run away in search of a home where he'll get the same attention he used to get before the new horse came along.
And, I have plenty more books planned!
One of the books I've been working on is almost ready to be pre-released; it just needs the final edits and a cover.
My main focus with writing now though is on the four book series I'm working on about a faerie dragon named Zeena. I'll tell you more another day though... Probably when I've completely finished the first book in the series.
I say "my main focus" because I dare say I'll do bits and pieces towards other books while working on that series. After all, I usually have a few things on the go at once.
January 13, 2015
Chris Bohjalian's ten ways to avoid writer's block
I'm not having any issues with writer's block these days; I've got a head full of ideas, all waiting their turn to get written down. But, for the benifit of any writers who follow my blog and aren't so lucky, here's something I got in a Goodreads newsletter e-mail today: Chris Bohjalian's ten suggestions for avoiding writer's block.
***
1) Don’t merely write what you know. Write what you don’t know. It might be more difficult at first, but – unless you’ve just scaled Mount Everest or found a cure for all cancers – it will also be more interesting.
2) Do some research. Read the letters John Winthrop wrote to his wife, or the letters a Civil War private sent home to his family from Antietam, or the stories the metalworkers told of their experiences on the girders high in the air when they were building the Empire State Building. Good fiction is rich with minutiae – what people wore, how they cooked, how they filled the mattresses on which they slept – and often the details you discover will help you dramatically with your narrative.
3) Interview someone who knows something about your topic. Fiction may be a solitary business when you’re actually writing, but prior to sitting down with your computer (or pencil or pen), it often demands getting out into the real world and learning how (for instance) an ob-gyn spends her day, or what a lawyer does when he isn’t in the courtroom, or exactly what it feels like to a farmer to milk a cow when he’s been doing it for 35 years. Ask questions. . .and listen.
4) Interview someone else. Anyone else. Ask questions that are absolutely none of your business about their childhood, their marriage, their sex life. They don’t have to be interesting (though it helps). They don’t even have to be honest.
5) Read some fiction you wouldn’t normally read: A translation of a Czech novel, a mystery, a book you heard someone in authority dismiss as “genre fiction.”
6) Write for a day without quote marks. It will encourage you to see the conversation differently, and help you to hear in your head more precisely what people are saying and thereby create dialogue that sounds more realistic. You may even decide you don’t need quote marks in the finished story.
7) Skim the thesaurus, flip through the dictionary. Find new words and words you use rarely – lurch, churn, disconsolate, effulgent, intimations, sepulchral, percolate, pallid, reproach – and use them in sentences.
8) Lie. Put down on paper the most interesting lies you can imagine. . .and then make them plausible.
9) Write one terrific sentence. Don’t worry about anything else – not where the story is going, not where it should end. Don’t pressure yourself to write 500 or 1,000 words this morning. Just write 10 or 15 ones that are very, very sound.
10) Pretend you’re a banker, but you write in the night to prove to some writing professor that she was wrong, wrong, wrong. Allow yourself a small dram of righteous anger.
***
Originally posted at https://www.goodreads.com/questions/12236-what-s-your-advice-for-aspiring-writers?utm_source=MadMimi&utm_medium=email&utm_content=Author+Newsletter+-+January+2015&utm_campaign=20141217_m123631035_Author+Newsletter+-+January+2015&utm_term=writer_27s+block
***
1) Don’t merely write what you know. Write what you don’t know. It might be more difficult at first, but – unless you’ve just scaled Mount Everest or found a cure for all cancers – it will also be more interesting.
2) Do some research. Read the letters John Winthrop wrote to his wife, or the letters a Civil War private sent home to his family from Antietam, or the stories the metalworkers told of their experiences on the girders high in the air when they were building the Empire State Building. Good fiction is rich with minutiae – what people wore, how they cooked, how they filled the mattresses on which they slept – and often the details you discover will help you dramatically with your narrative.
3) Interview someone who knows something about your topic. Fiction may be a solitary business when you’re actually writing, but prior to sitting down with your computer (or pencil or pen), it often demands getting out into the real world and learning how (for instance) an ob-gyn spends her day, or what a lawyer does when he isn’t in the courtroom, or exactly what it feels like to a farmer to milk a cow when he’s been doing it for 35 years. Ask questions. . .and listen.
4) Interview someone else. Anyone else. Ask questions that are absolutely none of your business about their childhood, their marriage, their sex life. They don’t have to be interesting (though it helps). They don’t even have to be honest.
5) Read some fiction you wouldn’t normally read: A translation of a Czech novel, a mystery, a book you heard someone in authority dismiss as “genre fiction.”
6) Write for a day without quote marks. It will encourage you to see the conversation differently, and help you to hear in your head more precisely what people are saying and thereby create dialogue that sounds more realistic. You may even decide you don’t need quote marks in the finished story.
7) Skim the thesaurus, flip through the dictionary. Find new words and words you use rarely – lurch, churn, disconsolate, effulgent, intimations, sepulchral, percolate, pallid, reproach – and use them in sentences.
8) Lie. Put down on paper the most interesting lies you can imagine. . .and then make them plausible.
9) Write one terrific sentence. Don’t worry about anything else – not where the story is going, not where it should end. Don’t pressure yourself to write 500 or 1,000 words this morning. Just write 10 or 15 ones that are very, very sound.
10) Pretend you’re a banker, but you write in the night to prove to some writing professor that she was wrong, wrong, wrong. Allow yourself a small dram of righteous anger.
***
Originally posted at https://www.goodreads.com/questions/12236-what-s-your-advice-for-aspiring-writers?utm_source=MadMimi&utm_medium=email&utm_content=Author+Newsletter+-+January+2015&utm_campaign=20141217_m123631035_Author+Newsletter+-+January+2015&utm_term=writer_27s+block
January 9, 2015
2014 holiday photos, part 3: a rodent christmas (FD)
It's time for the rodent gang's Christmas photos!
All the rodent gang got peanuts (in shells for the rats and degus, but not for the gerbils as they were struggling with them; too big for the little guys). Now this degu is ready to find out what's in the packages with the rodent gang's names on them:
I think it was Jasper, but I'm not 100% certain. Regardless of which of the degus it was though, he came to wait patiently there as soon as we mentioned sorting the gifts, and stayed put while we unwrapped the degu package and showed him what Santa Paws had left them.
So... This is what the degus had for Christmas:
Here are the degus checking out their new toy:
The degus love the treats; we were able to get shots of all four of them enjoying them:
This is what the gerbils had for Christmas:
Here's Bilbo enjoying one of the treats:
That's the only gerbil photo we have, because neither of them would stay still long enough for a shot of one of them checking out the wooden carrots they got, and Baggins was so excited that taking a photo of him at all was impossible; he was bouncing about all over the place, and we could hardly keep track of where he was!
So... Here's what the ratty girls had for Christmas:
The girls love their new toy:
(I think the first two are Star, and the third is Skye, but they were moving about and climbing all over it so much we couldn't get decent shots, nor keep track of who was where).
They really love that toy; they play with it a lot!
We couldn't get shots of them with their treats, because they decided the treats were special enough that they had to hide in their house to eat them; we could hear them nibbling, but they were completely out of sight.
We did get these two photos of Skye earlier in the month though:
And this one of the girls sleeping together in their hammock:
"Don't take my photo; I've had enough!"
Fair enough.... I guess we're done then, LOL!
All the rodent gang got peanuts (in shells for the rats and degus, but not for the gerbils as they were struggling with them; too big for the little guys). Now this degu is ready to find out what's in the packages with the rodent gang's names on them:
I think it was Jasper, but I'm not 100% certain. Regardless of which of the degus it was though, he came to wait patiently there as soon as we mentioned sorting the gifts, and stayed put while we unwrapped the degu package and showed him what Santa Paws had left them.So... This is what the degus had for Christmas:
Here are the degus checking out their new toy:
The degus love the treats; we were able to get shots of all four of them enjoying them:
This is what the gerbils had for Christmas:
Here's Bilbo enjoying one of the treats:
That's the only gerbil photo we have, because neither of them would stay still long enough for a shot of one of them checking out the wooden carrots they got, and Baggins was so excited that taking a photo of him at all was impossible; he was bouncing about all over the place, and we could hardly keep track of where he was!
So... Here's what the ratty girls had for Christmas:
The girls love their new toy:
(I think the first two are Star, and the third is Skye, but they were moving about and climbing all over it so much we couldn't get decent shots, nor keep track of who was where).They really love that toy; they play with it a lot!
We couldn't get shots of them with their treats, because they decided the treats were special enough that they had to hide in their house to eat them; we could hear them nibbling, but they were completely out of sight.
We did get these two photos of Skye earlier in the month though:
And this one of the girls sleeping together in their hammock:
"Don't take my photo; I've had enough!"
Fair enough.... I guess we're done then, LOL!
January 8, 2015
Nan is 87 today!
We once again interrupt these holiday posts for yet another special announcement:
Today is the 87th birthday of my Nan (Dad's Mother).
She won't see this blog post - unless Dad does when a message about me writing the post shows up on Facebook, and he shows it to her somehow - but I'm going to say "happy birthday" to her on here anyway.
So... Happy birthday, Nan!
Today is the 87th birthday of my Nan (Dad's Mother).
She won't see this blog post - unless Dad does when a message about me writing the post shows up on Facebook, and he shows it to her somehow - but I'm going to say "happy birthday" to her on here anyway.
So... Happy birthday, Nan!
January 7, 2015
2014 holiday photos, part 2: cards and gifts (FD)
We got lots of Christmas cards:
A huge "thank you" to everyone who sent cards! :)
And, look what Santa left us:
Kelly's stocking was full of chocolate, mine had some chocolate and some natural licorice in it, and the rodent stocking contained some wooden sticks for them all to get their teeth in to (rodents need to be able to gnaw on something, and these packs of sticks are an ideal option that's safe but fun for them all).
Around the same time as the Christmas card from her and Karma arrived, I got this card from Rita so I could see what she'd been doing with the gluing together of paper towels that had been used previously with paint, which she'd mentioned loads of times on her blog:
I'm not sure if you'd consider it to technically be a Christmas present, but I'm including it in this post anyway. Besides, it was very thoughtful of Rita to send me it... Thanks, Rita! :)
And my brother, Carl, sent me a camel:
His name is "Camella" (pronounced "cam-ay-lah") because Carl and I decided as children that was a good name for a camel, so every camel since then has been called Camella.
I also had some money, and an audio copy of "The Lady of the Rivers" by Philippa Gregory. I don't have the others in the "Cousins' War" series, but the book - though listed as being the 3rd in the series - is the first chronologically, so the fact I don't have the others yet isn't a big deal; I can still go ahead and read this one without missing anything important.
My ratty girls, Skye and Star, were technically Christmas presents too, even though I'd had them over a month by the time Christmas arrived.
A huge "thank you" to everyone who sent cards! :)And, look what Santa left us:
Kelly's stocking was full of chocolate, mine had some chocolate and some natural licorice in it, and the rodent stocking contained some wooden sticks for them all to get their teeth in to (rodents need to be able to gnaw on something, and these packs of sticks are an ideal option that's safe but fun for them all).Around the same time as the Christmas card from her and Karma arrived, I got this card from Rita so I could see what she'd been doing with the gluing together of paper towels that had been used previously with paint, which she'd mentioned loads of times on her blog:
I'm not sure if you'd consider it to technically be a Christmas present, but I'm including it in this post anyway. Besides, it was very thoughtful of Rita to send me it... Thanks, Rita! :)And my brother, Carl, sent me a camel:
His name is "Camella" (pronounced "cam-ay-lah") because Carl and I decided as children that was a good name for a camel, so every camel since then has been called Camella.I also had some money, and an audio copy of "The Lady of the Rivers" by Philippa Gregory. I don't have the others in the "Cousins' War" series, but the book - though listed as being the 3rd in the series - is the first chronologically, so the fact I don't have the others yet isn't a big deal; I can still go ahead and read this one without missing anything important.
My ratty girls, Skye and Star, were technically Christmas presents too, even though I'd had them over a month by the time Christmas arrived.
January 6, 2015
Bilbo and Baggins are 1 today!
We interrupt these holiday photo posts to bring you a special announcement:
Today is the 1st birthday of our gerbils, Bilbo and Baggins!
Happy 1st birthday, gerbil pals!
Today is the 1st birthday of our gerbils, Bilbo and Baggins!
Happy 1st birthday, gerbil pals!
January 5, 2015
2014 holiday photos, part 1: decorations and edibles (FD)
First, here are some photos of the various Christmas tree ornaments, which I had hung up here and there (since we only have a small tree, so they don't really fit on it):
Next, here's the little display I set up on my desk with my Christmas teddy that plays "Grandma Got Run Over By A Reindeer" and some battery powered candles:
Here's our little Christmas tree:
A close up of one of the birds I got from Iggy a few years ago, sitting in our little Christmas tree:
This Santa was the first holiday ornament I ever brought myself. I got it from the post office when I went to mail cards the first Christmas I moved out (which, as it turned out, ended up being the Christmas I spent in Canada).
This is the crystal angel ornament we brought the first year we moved to where we currently live:
Here's the sledding penguin ornament Kelly and I made a couple of years back... The penguin was very happy to be able to have fun in the snow Iggy sent us:
Kelly and I made a new decoration this year. I got a kit to make a polar bear decoration among the craft items I got for Christmas last year, so we made it this year. And here it is:
I also made some homemade leek and chestnut purses...
I'd had some a few years ago that we got from Asda, but they cost a lot for just a few, so I thought I'd save some money by making them myself. Besides, home made is always better! I didn't have a recipe, so just made it up. They contain grated chestnut, finely chopped leek (lightly fried before being put in the pastry purses) and cheese.
They were very tasty, if I do say so myself... Something I'd consider making again for sure!
The home made double chocolate brownies were very tasty too...
Next, here's the little display I set up on my desk with my Christmas teddy that plays "Grandma Got Run Over By A Reindeer" and some battery powered candles:
Here's our little Christmas tree:
A close up of one of the birds I got from Iggy a few years ago, sitting in our little Christmas tree:
This Santa was the first holiday ornament I ever brought myself. I got it from the post office when I went to mail cards the first Christmas I moved out (which, as it turned out, ended up being the Christmas I spent in Canada).
This is the crystal angel ornament we brought the first year we moved to where we currently live:
Here's the sledding penguin ornament Kelly and I made a couple of years back... The penguin was very happy to be able to have fun in the snow Iggy sent us:
Kelly and I made a new decoration this year. I got a kit to make a polar bear decoration among the craft items I got for Christmas last year, so we made it this year. And here it is:
I also made some homemade leek and chestnut purses...
I'd had some a few years ago that we got from Asda, but they cost a lot for just a few, so I thought I'd save some money by making them myself. Besides, home made is always better! I didn't have a recipe, so just made it up. They contain grated chestnut, finely chopped leek (lightly fried before being put in the pastry purses) and cheese.They were very tasty, if I do say so myself... Something I'd consider making again for sure!
The home made double chocolate brownies were very tasty too...
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Author and book news for children's author and poet, Victoria Zigler, as well as general news from the life of the Zigler family; furry and otherwise!
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