Maggie Price blogging!

Another great Oklahoma author is visiting on the blog at my alter-ego's site, http://www.marilyn-pappano.com/news/index.php.

Maggie's talking about her latest romantic suspense, THE PASSION OF SAM BROUSSARD. Check it out! Rachel10:32 PM

Guest Blogger!

Visting over on my alter ego's blog http://www.marilyn-pappano.com/news/index.php today is USA Today best-selling, RITA award-winning author Merline Lovelace. Take a minute to look at it, then order her new romantic suspense.
Rachel7:03 PM

True Crime

I love true crime stuff -- yeah, married to a former cop/retired federal agent, I damn well better, or else my eyes would have rolled up in my head years ago and stayed there. If I ever quit writing romance/suspense, that's what I'd want to do -- delve deeply into real-life crime like Ann Rule etc. (Anne? Don't remember and too lazy to look it up.)

So I watch the murder mysteries on 48 Hours and Dateline and such. Last night, 48 Hours featured what surely has to be one of the most incompetent detectives in the country. He's investigating what starts as a homicide, with a second victim's life hanging in the balance (he later dies, too). The detective decides the couple's teenage son is the guilty one. Forget that he denies it. That there's no evidence linking him to the crime. That the motive the detective ascribes to him doesn't hold water. That common sense and logic and, hey, good police work (something he's obviously not familiar with) point to the father's business parter-turned-enemy.

The kid asks for a polygraph. The detective refuses because -- and I kid you not, he honestly said this to the reporter -- HE'S a better judge of whether someone's being truthful than a polygraph.

The family of the victims try to talk to the detective, but he refuses. After all, they have nothing to add to his investigation. {Not only more reliable than a polygraph but psychic, too. Hot damn, New York was lucky to have this guy!)

The last guy to see the victims alive -- the abovementioned business partner who's in debt to the tune of a half mil to his partner -- disappears and resurfaces later living under an assumed name on the West Coast, but that's no reason to be suspicious, Brilliant Detective says. After all, he's a nice guy. He's not capable of something like this.

But the couple's seventeen-year-old son is???

What a complete and total putz.

Sadly, the kid got convicted, but once a REAL cop got on the case (a retired NYPD detective, who clearly understood the process of investigating a crime -- following the evidence to the guilty party), the guy's conviction was overturned. Now the state's investigating the way the case was handled -- or mishandled.

Holy crap, it's enough to scare a person! Rachel12:06 PM

Saturday night in northeast Oklahoma . . .

Okay, how many of you know that subject line is a take on John Denver's "Saturday Night in Toledo, Ohio"?

It's nearly seven p.m. and I haven't done squat today. Well, not entirely true -- I went to WalMart (aaaccckkk!) and scrubbed down half the kitchen cabinets and cleaned the kitchen -- except for that one counter. Keeping stuff off the counters that doesn't belong just doesn't work for me. One of these days, I'm going to build a detached garage and convert the current garage into a pantry, a new laundry room, storage, etc., and I swear, I'm going to have a space there where I can just dump things. If I let it into the house, it just seems to multiply until every flat surface is covered.

But I didn't get around to raking the dog poo (when you got six of 'em going in the same part of the yard, it gets to be really messy -- and stinky -- if you don't keep the rake, shovel and wheelbarrow handy). And I didn't even think of picking up the chain saw and heading out to tackle the ice storm damage. I didn't climb up into the attic to rearrange all the stuff up there to make room for more stuff. The temperature has to get higher than 43 degrees to consider that. And though I thought about writing, I didn't actually get around to it.

However, I did get a cool new set of earbuds for my iPod that don't get tangled in my hair and fall out all the time. (Playing right now: Sloppy Drunk by Saffire - Uppity Blues Women.) I got some hair color -- 6RB (what the heck kind of name is that? Maybe they should hire the OPI fingernail polish namers to come up with some decent names for them.)

And I got a new book -- THE WICKED WAYS OF A DUKE by Laure Lee Guhrke. I love her books, so I'm getting off here, refilling my glass with Diet Dr. Pepper, and diving in! Rachel6:45 PM

Save Me From Morons

Tonight, after visiting with DIL and our gorgeous grand-kiddo, Robert and I stopped at WalMart on the way home. I swear, the rest of Creek County must have been breathing a sigh of relief, because every single moron in the area was in the store at that moment.

When did grocery shopping become a social event? I can't count how many times I turned down an aisle, only to find it totally blocked by multiple couples with multiple children chitchatting, enjoying the warmth inside and utterly uncaring that no one could get past. A polite "Excuse me" didn't work. Less polite mutterings didn't work, either. Nudging one or more with the shopping cart did, at least, get their attention, not that it made them move. I resorted to snarling a few times; that got better results.

What's happened to common courtesy? When I was a kid, my mom went grocery-shopping every Friday night after work, and she usually took the three of us with her. But we didn't get in anyone's way. We didn't walk three abreast down the aisles. We didn't push our carts into other people or refuse to move out of their way (actually, we never GOT in anyone's way because our mama taught us better). If we got cranky or too loud or whiny, we were sent to the car.

No more. The kids in the store were obnoxious, rude and loud. No surprise, given that their parents were obnoxious, rude and loud. It took nearly an hour for a trip that shouldn't have been more than twenty minutes, and most of that time was spent trying to maneuver past people blocking the aisles while they talked, or piddling along down the middle of the aisle so no one could pass, or kids having tantrums while Mom and/or Dad yelled, swatted, and threatened but actually did nothing. Jeez, I was ready to bang someone's head against the tile floor -- and by the time I got out, I felt as if it had been MY head.

I understand, there are times when a parent has to go to the store and has to take the kids with her. But I don't understand why, when Mom AND Dad are available, why can't one of them stay home with the kids? Why does the whole brood have to tag along, and why do they have to be so damn obstructive?

Grrr . . . Rachel7:36 PM

Cleaning Sucks

I spent much of yesterday and about half of today cleaning the dogs' room. (Yes, they have their own room.) Talk about a dirty job . . .

Okay, I admit, I'm not a cleaner. I love clean houses; I just love when they clean themselves. And that never happens, at least not here.

So I don't recall ever cleaning the room thoroughly since we moved the dogs in. (It used to be the kiddo's room, but, hey, move off for ten years, and we eventually do something else with your space.) And the only reason I decided to clean thoroughly now is that I had to get the Christmas decorations put up, and they go in the closet in that room, and it was so dusty/pet hairy that my allergies gave me fits going in there.

So I vacuumed. Dusted. Everywhere. Honest to God, I had to vacuum the WALLS. We live in the country off a dirt road, so everything gets dusty, and six dogs put out a LOT of hair and dander. Before I started, Robert went up in the attic and emptied the canister for the central vac. (The guys who installed the current one told us the canister would need to be emptied about twice a year. Hahahahahah. Try twice a freakin' month.)

I had told Robert that he'd probably have to empty the canister again before I was finished, but I was joking. Well, not so much a joke. After a while, the suction on the vacuum dropped way off. I decided to call it quits since I'd been at it for hours and, like I said, I'm not a cleaner by nature. When I unplugged the vacuum hose from the wall, a hose-size clump of hair actually blew out of the outlet. And it was still attached to another hose-size clump of hair thst slipped back down out of sight.

Hm. So there's a hose or pipe or whatever snaking through my walls and attic, from the back hall all the way upstairs to the canister, and it's FULL of dog hair and dust. This long tunnel solid-packed with the shedding of six dogs. Kind of boggles the mind.

Next week I'm getting back to work -- writing work. Cleaning always makes me thankful I've got another job. It's the only good thing about it.

Well, that, and the fact that I can breathe in the dogs' room again. Rachel3:01 PM

Me and iTunes

Okay, by now you probably know that if anyone can somehow manage to make things twice as difficult as they should be, it's me. Take last night, for example.

The grandkiddo is already demonstrating great taste in music -- he gave me a Saffire- The Uppity Blues Women CD for Christmas. (Okay, so he was barely two months old at the time; his father had to help him place the order.) Unfortunately, it was in the form of a download from iTunes.

I have dial-up, remember. It takes for-freakin'-ever to get anything done.

So I have, like, five hours before bedtime. I get online, open up the iTunes store and click "Redeem Now" in the email from Grandkiddo via iTunes. And nothing happens. Over and over and over. Finally I copy this honkin' long code, prepared to sign onto the iTunes site and see if I can go from there. As I slide the mouse away from the unworking "Redeem Now" button, it works.

I put in my password (my user name is my old email address from something like four years ago, but I can't get iTunes to let me change it), and the download starts. It goes and goes and goes and, voila, two hours later, I've got TWO freakin' songs downloaded.

Another hour, I've made better progress; I've got five out of twenty.

And I lose my connection to iTunes.

It won't let me reuse the same "Redeem Code," so I dig my way through the iTunes' site and finally figure out how to resume the download. After five hours, I've got fifteen songs. I go to bed, leaving my little computer and my blasted slow dial-up working away.

Eight o'clock this morning, there are still three songs to go.

Aaaarrrrggghh.

In fairness to my provider, the Internet connection got terminated at some point during the night -- probably several times -- and when it reconnected automatically, of course, it couldn't restart the iTunes download.

After another hour this morning to finish those last three songs, I finally have my Saffire CD!!

If you like blues and aren't familiar with the Uppity Blues Women, get thee to iTunes (though, frankly, I prefer a music store these days!). They have some of the best songs -- "Middle-Aged Blues Boogie" is a hoot, "Bitch with a Bad Attitude" might be my new favorite song, the Liza-and-the-insurance-man song is great, and "(No Need) Pissin' on a Skunk" is a goal I've been striving for a long time.

Only I could require thirteen hours to download a single CD. But it was damn well worth it! Rachel7:11 PM

Give us a freakin' break

Another gorgeous northeast Oklahoma day -- highs were in the mid-seventies, though it was cloudy and there were storm warnings all afternoon. Nothing unusual for our state. We are in Tornado Alley, after all.

Now, if you're a regular reader of this blog, you'll remember that I took an oak limb to the face on Saturday. Today my nose was so tender that I couldn't wear my glasses, which means no reading, no game-playing, no working crosswords or cross-stitch. Which means television to entertain me. (I can barely make out what I'm typing here, so any typos are the tree's fault.)

But the storms have moved in, and holy crap! You'd think the weather guys in Tulsa have never been through this before. Since seven o'clock this evening, there's been nothing on any of the local channels but weather reports. (Oh, yeah, occasional glimpses of football on Fox, but not being a football type, I don't count that.)

Come on, what can you say about a storm system that takes more than two freakin' hours? If you're in the path of the storms and you haven't had the sense to take shelter, what difference does it make if six stations are telling you to?

Storm warnings are, for the most part, majorly boring, especially since we only seem to get the endless over-and-over coverage at night. Have you ever experienced the awesomeness of dark-of-night footage of rain and wind? It's SOOO not impressive. If not for the meteorologists telling you what you're looking at, you'd have a tough time telling.

And why do ALL of the stations have to broadcast the same repetitive reports? Does Channel 2's take on the radar vary that much from 6's, 8's, or 23's? And since it doesn't, why the hell can't they get together and decide that, in case of bad weather, Channel 19 will broadcast the warnings and the others will stick to regular programming? After all, how many broadcasts can one person watch at a time? (You guessed it -- Channel 19 is pretty much the station of last resort for me.)

It's times like this that make me really regret being one of maybe ten people left in the free world who don't have cable or satellite TV. Crap, I've resorted to watching "Family Guy" tonight, and trust me, it doesn't get much worse than that.

Except for the weather reports. Rachel9:12 PM

Are my eyes crossed yet?

That's what I always ask Robert when he starts giving me waaaay more detail about something than I want to know. Like when I ask him what kind of fuel an airplane uses and he gives me the history of flight, or I ask him what time it is and he tells me how to make a watch.

(True story: when the kiddo, my sister, bil, and nephew visited Kitty Hawk, there was a marker several feet high out on the "runway" the Wrights used. The women next to me were truly amazed at what good pilots the brothers must have been to be able to take off without ever hitting that marker.)

Anyhoo . . . back to boredom. Have you ever read Roberts Rules of Order? It's so dry that it could gag a maggot. I can't keep focused on it. There's no action. No plot. No characterization. No dialogue. Absolutely nothing of interest.

So why am I bothering? Because my alter ego is the newly-elected president of our fabulous writers' group (*I* prefer the title of "Princess of All She Sees") and the first meeting where she/we will serve in that function is coming up this Saturday. I don't mind making a fool of myself in public, but she tries to maintain some measure of dignity. She likes to get things right -- corrects other people's misspellings, uses grammar and punctuation the way a writer's supposed to, and organizes her books alphabetically by genre and author -- so *I* have to read Roberts Rules with her.

Yawwwnn.

Luckily, the chapter has a copy of Roberts Rules for utterly disinterested morons, which I intend to use to make a cheat sheet. Ol' Roberts is way beyond mouldering the grave (where his rules should be, too), so who'll know? Rachel2:32 PM

Bruised, Battered, But Still Breathing

Did I forget to tell you guys happy new years? I intended to. Really I did. (Of course, you know what they say about good intentions.)

It was a gorgeous day in northeastern Oklahoma -- sunny, nearly seventy degrees, nice breeze. I woke up at four, couldn't get back to sleep, and got up at five. I'll have breakfast, I thought, then load the dishwasher (too tired last night) and get dressed, and by then the sun will be up and I can go outside and get some work done.

Obviously, I'm not normally up this early. The sun didn't come up until something like seven-thirty. I ate my protein-fortified oatmeal. Loaded the dishwasher. Wiped down the counters. Reorganized one cabinet. Rearranged another. Put new liner paper in yet another. Checked e-mail. Got dressed. Let one dog out. Let him in. Let another one . . .

Finally the sky lightened, and I grabbed my brand-new chainsaw and headed out back to clean up the limbs downed in front of my office by the pre-Christmas ice storm. I got two bunches of those cleaned and stacked some firewood, then drove out to my mom's and started work on the limbs clogging her front yard. (Yeah, I still have about six thousand limbs in my yard and at least two trees to take down, but they don't bother me the way they bother Mom.)

I was making pretty good progress when I got to a branch still hung up in the tree. Setting the chainsaw aside, I grabbed hold of it and pulled.

It pulled back.

I pulled harder, thinking, okay, the damn thing's going to come loose and I'm going to fall ten feet back on my butt. No big deal. It's happened more times than I care to admit.

(If my name were Jane, my nickname would probably be Calamity.)

Most of the trees we're dealing with gnarly old oaks -- post oaks, scrub oaks, blackjack oaks -- just different names all meaning "pain in the ass." Each branch has about 200 littler branches attached that go in every direction. They get all tangled up together, and they scratch like hell.

So I pulled on the limb with all my might, and damned if it didn't give. It landed exactly where I wanted it to.

Unfortunately, its gnarly little twiggy fingers pulled another limb down with it.

Right on my face.

I try very hard to never swear around my mother, because 1) she's too old for me to shock her unnecessarily and 2) she may be seventy-five, but she's still my mom. Luckily, she'd gone inside the house before the limb hit me and the curses hit the air. After "oh, shit!" and "fuck me!", my next concern was for my brand-new safety glasses (they were fine) and then my face. (My forehead and nose are all scraped up, but I'll survive.)

After lunch, my sister and her husband joined us, and we got about ninety percent of the storm damage cleaned up. Now there are huge piles of gnarly branches waiting to be burned (and some truly gorgeous cottonwood branches, in varying shades of tan, brown, and green). We even took down the eight-foot trunk of a tree that died years ago but never had the sense to fall.

My face is scraped, my arms are covered with scratches, and I've got a new bruise (or six or eight). But Mom's yard looks great.

I'm thinking mine might have to wait for a wildfire to sweep through. Rachel7:06 PM