Blogetary (Weblog + Commentary = Blogetary)

So, eventually, I made the Perfect Lemon Cake, which is the name of the recipe. It was given to me by Wild who got it from Mels Kitchen I think. Anyway, it had sour cream and instant pudding and was very dense, which is just way I like it. And you can sorta see it here (click to watch the video):

I am not that girl that men fall in love with, swoon over or buy flowers for. I’m the woman the men talk to about the girls they have fallen in love with, swooned over or are thinking of buying flowers for (“Should I or shouldn’t I? Do you think…?”). So I can count the number of times I have had flowers given to me on one hand and one of those was a, “Yeah, I got this for free and thought you’d like it,” tossed at me by one boyfriend and then a couple of, “My girlfriend/wife is mad at me and refused these, but you might like them.” The remaining two were flowers from my best friend, Jim (long story, but pretty purple mums that I really appreciated), and a bouquet on my birthday from a college roommate, Charissa.

Now I LOVE flowers. When I had a garden there was one year that my love for flowers took over my Taurean practicality and instead of vegetables it was all Monet flowers all summer long. And there have been years when all I did was YEARN for flowers and friends and family would ask me what I wanted for my birthday and Christmas and I’d list books and albums and flowers. And I’d always hope for flowers. And never get the flowers.

Which is why I started buying flowers for myself for my birthday. I realized it was silly to wish for something when I had the capability of getting it for myself all along. And so flowers were things I started buying for myself whenever I wanted to celebrate something for me – Christmas, Birthday, or just because.

And then today, on a Sunday, I get a call from the front door for a delivery, but I didn’t order anything…..

And it’s FLOWERS!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Roses, hydrangeas, little wild flowers that my gramma would have loved and I loved, too.

Thank you, Aunt Pat, for my wonderful, glorious birthday flowers! They are truly appreciated for the gift that they are!

**Addendum: I just remembered, at my recent job, with the nice ladies, everyone gets flowers or potted plants on their birthday. It’s a really nice tradition.

Which tiara should Rachel wear on her birthday?

I’m up too late. I always get myself into trouble when I’m up too late. I start thinking, mulling, brooding, cogitating. And if I’m not careful, it gets me into trouble, like the time I got banned from a magazine.

I’d been up too late then, too. Made the mistake of reading my email, seeing a rejection slip in the email inbox, reading it and hitting reply. Little did I know that at the other end the editor was also up too late, and also more apt to hit reply than to let it lie. Back and forth we went (and not in a very kind way), and voila, I’m banned from submitting any more to a particular market, because after all, it wasn’t very good behavior. And though I hadn’t seen it on that particular market, that was spelled out in the small print of the submission process.

And then, because I had been up too late and was not thinking professionally, and because I tend to cope by making fun of things, I blogged about it. I didn’t just blog about it, I wrote an entire long, rambling thing, naming the market and the editor and not saying the nicest things -

It wasn’t very wise.

Someone saw my little blog and didn’t appreciate my method of coping. Before I knew it a crowd of that editor’s friends came visiting my blog and it wasn’t to have tea and cookies and pass the time of day. I got beaten about the head and shoulders for a bit, which surprised the heck out of me. I always figured (and still do) that I had maybe 10-20 people drop by for new posts. If that. I didn’t think anyone would care.

We’re not always aware of how much influence we may or may not have on the world around us. It’s usually much more or much less than we assume.

Plus, I’m an adamant believer in the right of free speech. Of course, consequences and responsibilities come with those rights.

It was spring then, like it is now. The older of my two cats – Kiko – and one of my closest friends – had just passed away. And one of the comments left on that (now deleted) blog – besides how irresponsible I was, etc., was how I was nothing but a whiner who cried on her bed with her cat and I should get over myself. They may have had a point, but it was hurtful, especially then. What I did wasn’t right, but what they did was bullying and it was wrong. I wasn’t going to their blogs (or cyber living rooms, if you will) to pick on them. At least, that’s how I saw it.

It was a difficult lesson(s) to learn: 1) How to be more circumspect and 2) How quickly the internet can turn into being just like those old playgrounds where I’d been bullied as a kid. Walking home from school I survived by figuring out how to avoid the mean boys who threw rocks at me on the way home from school, or how to keep my little sister from being run over by bullies who decided to run us down with their bikes. Emotionally, what happened on the internet a few years ago was very close to those same experiences. What made it worse was that those visitors to my blog were all part of this community I had read about it and thought I wanted to be part of – until then. I had wanted to be part of the popular crowd.

Anyway, this time of year, if I happen to see any of those names of those fellow writers somewhere out in the world of print or online who dropped by to let me know how they felt, I feel an old bruise in my brain and my heart – a reminder of the hurt and of the lesson. And a reminder of being the kid who didn’t quite fit in. And tonight, once again, I’m up too late. Twilight Zone has come and gone to be followed by Sea Hunt, Highway Patrol, the Patty Duke Show and now Mr. Ed. So – it’s a cogitating sort of night. And it makes me mull over what mistakes I will make and lessons I will learn in the future. My sister tells me I should ask the Universe to teach me these lessons with ease and joy. So, as I ponder over the year to come and possible lessons to learn, as I hug my remaining four-footed friend to me, I will ask for a way to learn the new lessons and make the new mistakes with ease and joy. And maybe, then, staying up late won’t mean getting myself into trouble anymore…

Or not…. ;-P

NOTE: I was thinking this morning, that I really need to acknowledge some really decent writers and editors out there who contacted me privately when this happened to say I may have made a mistake, but to just hang in there and ignore the behavior of these few bullies and move on.  And those writers and editors who have been kind since then – encouraging me, providing me with advice when needed and a good example. I probably learned more from them than anyone else in the whole experience.

The current issue of The Illuminata (From Tyrannosaurus Press: Saving SF from Extinction Since 2001) is now out! You can find it here. It includes reviews, articles on SFnal topics and even a story! All for FREE! Just go here to download a free copy!

As I mentioned on my last post my birthday is in a couple of weeks, and normally, around my birthday, I like to do things that I know I really like just for me. Some of those things include buying myself flowers (I tend to be partial to yellowy orange roses this time of year, but anything that catches my fancy and spirit makes its way home), treating myself to my favorite lemoncello, and making myself a lemon cake with lemon frosting.

[Normally, at this point, I would insert a picture of one my past tries at my favorite cake, but I can't find any. So, instead, here's a copy of a lemon cupcake I had from Lark, on Sunset, a couple of years ago.]

Usually, I use cake mix from a box and frosting from a tub and just see what I can do with that, decorate it with lemons and voila! My own lemon cake. This year, however, I decided I’d like to try something from scratch, or a little different from just using a box mix and a tub-o-frosting. So, I thought I would look up lemon cake recipes on the interwebs and see what I can find there. There are a LOT of lemon cake recipes out there in the world. There’s a Tequila Lemon Cake, a Greek Lemon Cake, and a Lemon Cake with Candied Pansies on the first Google. And a lot more I don’t want to sift through. So, what I thought I would do is ask my friends for their help.

So, if you have a recipe for a lemon cake that you really think is the best lemon cake you’ve ever had, I would love to have you send it my way! And then, if I choose your cake and I’m able to do it justice, I’ll blog about it and show a picture and, if you like, let everyone know where I got such a wonderful lemon cake recipe!

Or, if nothing else, I’ll get a box of lemon cake mix and see what I can do with lemon juice and lemon rind and then I’ll show you a pic of that.

It’s all good.

(from my garden when I lived in San Francisco…)

PBS and the Poetry Foundation have decided to do mini poetry films, suitable for playing on the iPhone, for April’s National Poetry Month. I wasn’t keeping track as a friend sent me the email letting me know about it and I just let it sit there for a couple of weeks before looking at it. So, I’ve missed the first week and a half, but you can find today’s poem here. To access all the poetry films available, then go here.

Happy Poetry month. Go forth and write poetry.

I wasn’t going to do a blog contest this time. I just sent out emails to people to see if they wanted a copy and went from there. But somehow I STILL ended up with an extra copy (maybe 2 or 3 unless I hear back from people on brick and mortar addresses). So, if you’re interested in possibly winning a copy of the February 2010 issue of Aoife’s Kiss with my story, “Love’s Clothing,” in it (a sad, werewolfy love story), then leave a comment down below by midnight Pacific Time April 25th. Then on April 26 (my birthday, hence the title) I will draw names out of a hat and contact the winner(s).

How’s that sound?

Okay – GO!

April is Poetry Month, so I thought I’d share a spur of the moment poem I wrote on a tribe, plus some tail, by Pye.

Poem:

I hold tails with my cat
breath and peace
twixt two green-eyed, orange haired

monsters…

and Tail: