What's Up Wednesday- December 3rd



Garden season, Distractions & the Great Train Robbery


What's Up Wednesday is a weekly blog hop geared toward readers and writers, allowing us to touch base with blog friends and let them know what's up.  Should you wish to join, check out Jaime's or Erin's lovely blogs and sign up with the link widget at the bottom of the post.

WHAT I'M READING
This time of year I get a hankering to read some classics. Jane Eyre, (which I've read so many times now I can't believe the binding hasn't fallen apart), Romeo & Juliet (because we had a debate over some lines and even when we figured it out...I just kept reading).

WHAT I'M WRITING
I didn't get a lot of writing done over the holiday, but I'm back at it. My goal for this week is to work on the "great train robbery" and the set up for some flashbacks.

WHAT WORKS FOR ME
Distracting my distractions. Everybody has them and sometimes distractions come in corporeal form. My biggest distraction... Boy Chris. When he has time off, oh say for a holiday, my writing time virtually disappears. Don't get me wrong, I'm very fond of my Distraction, but I can't get a coherent thought on paper if he's interrupting me every five minutes to tell me he's crazy about me or to ask what kind of kale (of 57 varieties) we should plant or ask if I want more tea. So I've reached that diabolical stage of distracting my Distraction. Best cunning plan to date, is to incite one or two of his Facebook friends into staging a debate on climate change or evolution, or even the historical or pagan origins of Christmas traditions. (Seriously, ask him about why we have Christmas trees and I'll get another 2 hours of writing time in) *wicked, evil, naughty Zoot grin*

This may not be relevant to anybody else, but if you need a cunning plan for distracting your Distractions... in the immortal words of Leonard Cohen "I'm Your Man".

WHAT ELSE I'VE BEEN UP TO 

◆    We had our 10th annual Veg Thanksgiving party. We hosted it at our local indie radio station which has this fantastic outdoor patio with a stage for live music. It was a blast, but let me just say, mashed potatoes for 150 people is a lot of freakin' potato peeling. (I'm thankful for vegan minions with mad potato peeling skills) :) 
◆   Garden season is in full swing here in Florida. We harvested our first tomatoes and I'm up to my eyeballs in papayas this year. I used to associate Christmas with snow shovels, now I associate it with getting the first oranges and tangerines off our trees. (Best fresh OJ ever! Seriously, going back to the boxed stuff is always hard.)
◆  Binge-watching The Peaky Blinders on Netflix. Very excellent use of music in that series. I had to download the playlist. Often when people put modern music to period dramas, it flops. Not so with Peaky Blinders.
Left to Right: Pineapple om nom; Morning harvest; first tangerines; baby marsh rabbit (rescued from neighbor cat, these little guys are everywhere; my newly emerged monarchs make me happy; we're growing our own wild cotton (which looks just like a fluffy cloud)


What have you guys been up to this week? Hope you had a great Holiday!






10 comments:

  1. As always, your photos are stunning, Kris! Best of luck getting back into the swing of writing. The holidays are a hard time for me to stay focused, too. I'm rooting for you!

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  2. Love the butterfly photo! So pretty!

    Best of luck distracting your Distraction. :P Have a great week!

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  3. Your photos are always so pretty and a perfect way to brighten my day when it's so grey and cold over here! You have a good plan on the distracting your distractions front--my problem is my main distractions are of the cute cat and dog variety, and then I get distracted distracting them…oops.

    Have a great writing week Kris!

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  4. Good luck setting up the flashbacks!!!! Love your pictures! Have a great week, Kris.

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  5. See, what you need to do is buy yourself a million copies of JANE EYRE (like I've done) and then none of them wear out. ;-) I'm loooooong overdue for my millionth reread of that book. I had to laugh at your whole distracting the Distraction lol. I might have to take a page from your book and try that with my own Distraction. Boy, does he love a good debate online, especially when their are internet trolls involved.

    Just looking at your lovely photos and hearing about all of the awesome that you do each week puts a smile on my face. Seriously, so cool! And how adorable is that wee marsh rabbit. Are you going to make something with your cotton? (Probably the dumbest question I could ask, right?) Can't wait to hear what you do with it! Have a great week, Kris! :D

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  6. I've never even heard of Peaky Blinders... but I'm always looking for my next Netflix binge :)

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  7. I *love* the idea of distracting your distractions XD I think I'd have to remove my PlayStation from the house though... :P

    My dad really loved Peaky Blinders. The BBC sure knows how to make 'em.

    Hmm... I used to have a copy of Jane Eyre from my time at UNC. Wonder whatever happened to it. Probably didn't make it back across the pond with me...

    Have a great week!

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  8. I'm due for a reread of JANE EYRE sometime soon too. Not sure when that'll happen because of the ever-growing TBR list, so I might have to tide myself over with the movie--the one with Michael Fassbender, of course, because it doesn't get any better than Magneto playing Mr. Rochester. My son and I just finished ROMEO AND JULIET recently too. He really enjoyed it, mostly because Shakespeare is such a perv and Romeo is so emo. Fun stuff!

    Your schemes to distract Boy Chris are very clever, not to mention funny. I'm pretty lucky when it comes to occupying my Distractions. As long as there are sports on, I have writing time to myself. Thank goodness for hockey and football!

    As always, I love your photos, but I'm squeeing over that teeny marsh rabbit (and I'm not one to squee a lot). It's so adorable! So are those the Florida version of the prairie dog then? Because prairie dogs are all over the place here.

    Have fun writing the "great train robbery" this week! Sounds intriguing! :)

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  9. 57 different varieties of kale??? What? Holy crap! My (lack of) food knowledge tells me there is one kind and like three of lettuce.

    I think your Boy Chris and my older brother would have a grand time together. Give my bro a random topic of conversation and he somehow always knows at least something about it.

    Have a beautiful, lovely week!

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  10. You are a genius! I had 4 Distractions home from school on a snow day, and distracting them would have been a good idea...

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