Kendra Leigh Castle

Archive for the ‘Nature’ Category

Hey everyone, sorry I’m a day late with pictures. I’m so tired. So, so tired. I’m having flashbacks to when the kids were non-sleeping infants. Chewie is still settling in, which means he is having to get used to sleeping in a crate at night, having to get used to the idea of going OUTSIDE to do his business, and also…well, his bowels are a little messed up because of the stress. Thrillsville. So Friday night he was up howling and shrieking pretty much ALL night, and last night was a lot better, but he was up every 1.5-2 hours to go potty…and he still managed to have a massive poo explosion in his crate one time. Brian and I took turns laying by his crate after each time he went out to help settle him down. It helped a lot.

Did I mention I’m tired?

Anyway, Chewie is a sweet, fluffy little bear of a dog who makes the most interesting noises…you should hear how he grumbles and groans in his deep little puppy voice! He’s laid back, for sure, but he’s perkier today than he has been so far, and I’m sure that will only increase as he gets used to us. Poor baby did NOT want to leave his mama and siblings and the breeder and her daughters…the moment we got him in the car he started to HOWL, and he did that for most of the two hour trip home. But he likes us now Sleeps a lot, but he’s a baby. Snorkels in his water dish, loves his toys, and follows all of us all over the downstairs. the kids are really enjoying him, and he’s good with them,w hich is SO nice. Daisy hates his guts, which is standard, but he’s not pushing it with her. The cat…well, Bruno is stalking Chewie, occcasionally bats at him, and is leading puppy a merry chase on purpose. Chewie wants to play with him. Bruno is going to make him work for it, but it could happen. It’s not like Chewie is ever going to have the element of surprise on his side. Even now, he doesn’t run so much as he lumbers at a medium speed, tops.

Wish you all could meet him We finally got a good video camera, though, so maybe I can figure  out how to post some videos of him!  Hope you all had a great weekend, and heeeeere’s Chewie!

Threw in one of my Daisy for good measure.  Pekes are pretty dogs, and she’s no exception.  No one ever thinks she’s headed for 12!  That’s my butt in the picture, by the way.  Super exciting, LOL.

Have a good Sunday!

Today’s the day!  As you read this, I’ll be in the car, probably, either heading to or from the breeder’s two hours north of here.  I can’t BELIEVE how fast the time has gone!  The kids are excited.  My husband is insanely excited.  I’m anxious, but I don’t think I’ll really feel a whole lot until it’s happening.  I’m like that.  I’ve been such a ball of stress that I’m not doing much moving past the moment I happen to be in!  It would help if members of my family would quit mentioning how quickly September’s getting here.  Um, yeah…I know.  And my book’s not going to be done until right before my deadline in September, so let’s not mention the closeness of it right now!  But anyway, I’m looking forward to getting a little puppy to love on.  Bonnie, the breeder, says he’s very sweet and likes to snuggle.  YAY!  So you all can expect lots of Chewie pictures from here on out.  See him become enormous before your very eyes, LOL! 

Hope you all had a good week.  Oh, I solved my homesickness problem…I’m putting together a trip to NY’s wine country for next summer, getting a cottage on the lake.  We’re going with my in-laws, and my mom-in-law and I are bad influences on each other with the wine drinking…so my father-in-law is a little scared that there are two wineries in walking distance from this cottage!  Love it.  Enjoy your weekend, and I will post Chewie pictures either today or tomorrow.  I’m going to want to share!  Here’s a video of him and his siblings just last week…can’t tell which brown one he is, since I can’t see collars (his would be white), but they’re all freaking cute.

My internet was down most of yesterday.  I was okay with it for a while, thinking it was part of a larger issue that they would fix in a couple of hours.  Then my neighbors came home from work, and THEIR internet was out, and they swarmed the tech guy who finally got sent out after I called.  People need their internets, man   Turned out the power box in this side of the neighborhood had gone up.  At least there weren’t riots.  I think it was touch and go there for a while.  You know what’s weird?  I distinctly remember my life before heavy internet use, or any at all.  I also remember what it was like before telemarketers.  I’m not that old, but my children are going to think this all makes me a dinosaur! 

Anyway, I had a great trip, left Tuesday and came back Sunday.  Got to play with my year-old nephew Aiden, who has somehow gone completely blonde between March, when I saw him last, and now!  My sister living in California is a total bummer, but that’s the Navy for you (she’s a Navy wife too).  I got to go consume mass quantities at Mac’s Speed Shop, which is the best freaking BBQ, like, EVER.  I drank a lot of Fat Tire beer, which is my current favorite.  And I managed to write, though not quite as much as I wanted to.  It’s hard when you take me out of my natural element…that would be parked either in my office or the big chair in my bedroom, wearing ratty PJs, and typing away.  My contract with GCP came yesterday, though, which is AWESOME.

Hope you all are enjoying the end of summer.  It’s still NASTY hot here, which has caused my husband to make all kinds of noise about eventually moving back North.  We’re both native NYers, and it’s a beautiful state, but, um…it snows.  A LOT.  Sometimes I miss it a little, but mostly I don’t.  I do, however, get homesick for it at the oddest times…like today In my alternate reality where I am fabulously wealthy I’d have a summer house on one of the lakes up there, and a place someplace else.  Probably I need to stop watching so much HGTV.  All of those International House Hunters have two homes!  Wah!  Oh well, here for now.  If you all are curious, here’s a page about my hometown, Adams, NY.  It’s small and quaint and no one knows where it is except others from the North Country!  My family has all scattered from there since I got married and left.  I was lucky, though…I grew up in a small neighborhood where my grandparents lived next door and my uncle and aunt (who were my dad’s twin brother and my mom’s younger sister) lived up the street, and the adults were all rfiends and tended to drink beer at various people’s houses every Friday night.  It was a nice way to grow up.  Here are some shots of stuff I actually do miss about the Frozen North:

The Burrville Cider Mill

Apple Cider donuts!!

Lake Ontario

Lots of old farms

Fall

Sackets Harbor, the inspiration for Kinnik's Harbor in COTHM

Talcott Falls, very near my old house

Pretty, huh?  It ain’t all roses, believe me, but there are a lot of nice things about growing up in the North Country.  Of course, a big problem is that there’s a lot of this:

SNOW

The 2008 storm back at home, or MORE SNOW

One of the ice storms that happen periodically

Hmm, maybe I should just use it for inspiration and stay where I am.  Anyway, if you all could live anywhere, where would it be?  Do you like where you are?  Miss where you’re from?  I’m off to grab more coffee, but I’ll be back

Hi everyone!  Sorry for the short post…I’m back in Charlotte to visit my sister and baby nephew while they’re here from California, and today we’re doing a party for my boys and baby Aiden…all of them are August birthdays, and it’s nice to celebrate with family.  So I’m not dressed yet, but I have managed to throw a cake in the over.  I’m getting there!  Hope you all had a good week.  I’ll be driving home on Sunday, and I’ll be back with something more substantial on Monday.  In the meantime, here’s this week’s picture of Chewie, who’ll be coming home a week from today!  And a song I’ve been enjoying as well   Happy Friday, everyone!!Â

Okay, as promised, here’s a look at the parents of our someday-puppy, who will be born in about a month!  Unfortunately, these aren’t pictures I myself took…I felt a little weird lugging my big camera into our initial meet and greet, but when we go out to choose which puppy will be ours at the three-week-old mark, I’ll have got a nice excuse to take some shots:-)  The black dog is Solomon, who is HUGE, and such a love…he’s just so freaking huggable, and that’s what he enjoys, which is great.  He also gives high-fives!  Um, and he drools, but we’re aware of the drooling thing with Newfoundlands.  It’s cool.  The brown and white (her coloring is called Landseer) is Honey Bear, the mama.  Again, a big, quiet sweetheart, and the picture doesn’t do how pretty she is justice.  I got some kisses and hugs from her too!  the kids were so all about these dogs…my son Jack, who’s not quite five, climbed all over them and they didn’t bat an eye.  There’s a reason that Nana in the original, written version of  Peter Pan was a Newf.  Had to laugh, though…my husband was the biggest kid of all around these gentle giants.  He wrapped his arms around Solomon and just kept saying, “He’s so awesome!”  It is fortunate for the breeder that it’s impossible to smuggle a 160-lb. dog out of a house, or I think Brian would have tried it.  We’re probably going to name the puppy (who will be a brown male) Chewie (yep, as in “Chewbacca”) as long as he doesn’t turn out to just not fit that at all.  But I bet he will.

This summer has turned out funny, not at all what I’d hoped or thought.  I was overjoyed at the news of my sale to GCP, of course, and I wouldn’t change that for anything!  But there’s been an excess of sad to temper it.  Sweet Casper found his forever home yesterday with a nice couple who have no kids or other animals, and I think he’ll do beautifully in that environment.  I still cried, but it’s all for the best.  I wanted him to find his place quickly, and he did, thanks to the wonderful rescue.  At the same time, my 13-year-old Peke baby, Fizgig, has about reached the end of his run, because bad news seems to run in packs.  We’ve known this was coming, but there are some unhappy things there that are quite imminent.  Won’t bore you with it, but it’s been very much on my mind.  Well, obviously, or I wouldn’t be going on about it.  Sorry!

You wouldn’t really think of fall as being a time for rebirth, for new life.  But it looks like this fall is going to be just that for this family.  My writing career will be coming back to life, and we’ll have a young, furry life in the house again.  I love that time of year anyway, so I’m hoping it infuses some joy back into the house (with the kids back in school as the icing on this cake, I’m sure it will!).  Right about now, everyone here is just tired.  Been a hell of a month.  But I am keeping on writing those sexy vampires, with some spicy werewolf action thrown in on the side, and it’s a nice place to bury myself when I’m not sure where else to go!

Hmm, I guess it can’t be September yet…I’ve got a lot of pages to write between now and then!  Still, in this heat, and what with everything, it’s not wrong to start dreaming of a nip in the air and the leaves turning red and gold, is it?

Morning, everyone!  So as you might have guessed, my weekend was a little consumed with the arrival of a dog we were going to call Bogie, and yet somehow have continued calling Casper.  Don’t ask me why.  He doesn’t really look like a Bogart in person…but then, I’m not all that sure he looks like a Casper, either!  I want to call him Loki, but I’m being ignored, so Casper it probably will stay.

Friday night was an adventure.  The transport up from South Carolina was delayed over maintenance issues with the van, so they got off at noon instead of 7 to drive up to DC.  As youmight guess, traffic on a Friday afternoon was a mess, and the arrival time got pushed back a few times.  It was going to be 7:30.  Then it was 8:30.  Then 10:30, 11:30, midnight…

The big white van rolled into the parking lot right about 1 am, and there was some cheering from the crowd of tired fosters and adoptive parents of all the animals inside.  You could hear the van before you could see it!  It was about the size of your average painter’s van, I guess, and somehow, inside, they had stuffed the crates of about 60 dogs.  For some of these animals, it was get stuffed in and make the ride or get euthanized, so the rescue people save as many as they can.  Lots of laughing, because there was one big Saint Bernard puppy, Lord Byron, who was too big to go in the back.  He sat very regally in the passenger seat   Anyway, we met a bunch of great people, plus our incredibly nice adoption coordinator Alison (who in her “spare time” does something with HIV clinics in Africa and is a world traveler besides).  Lots of wonderful animals lovers, and a young couple we hung with who were waiting on their first “kid,” a pretty little Aussie mix named Chloe.

So anyway, we could hear the van before we could see it.  Lots of barking, as you might imagine!  And wow, the smell when the doors opened…well, you gotta figure how many hours the dogs had been in there with minimal breaks.  We’d been warned!  Fortunately, Casper was probably the fifth dog out.  Because he’s a puppy and not fully vaccinated yet, he was handed directly into my arms and we had to scoot so as not to expose him to anything else the other dogs might be carrying.  He was pretty scared and had to be pulled out of his crate, but once he was in my arms and got to slurp some water from a bowl that Brian held over my shoulder, Casper perked up.  The ride home was fun, just because I had a big white puppy on my lap who kept turning around to give kisses.  I gotta tell you, though.  He is BIG, and I didn’t realize how difficult it can be to find enough lap for a dog this size!!

It was a busy, tiring weekend.  Casper is a sweet puppy, very busy, very interested in everything, and completely adorable.  I swear he’s grown just in the couple of days he’s been here.  We gave him a bath as soon as we got back here about 3 am (one of our awesome neighbor friends hung out on our couch while we were gone), because baby was kind of ripe, though not from poo, thank God.  He really wants to play with the Pekes, who have kept busy finding places to lay that he might not notice them (they are SO not interested), he really wants to play with the cat (who has whacked him in the head a couple of times for being an obnoxious puppy), and he really wants to play with us.  Fortunately, we can oblige him.  Casper is different from any dog I’ve ever had.  Apart from being huge, he’s clutzy and messy.  He goes galumphing all over the house, knocking into things.  He’s hit his head a few times on chairs and then acts like someone has caused this to happen to him.  He eats his kibble and somehow creates a debris field that extends into other rooms.  And he drinks water with his mouth open, then wanders away, still with his mouth open, drooling half of what he was trying to drink all over the floor.  In short, he is a mess.  He’s also completely awesome.

So that was my weekend.  Things are settling down here, though I imagine it will be a week or two before the animals all adjust to the new living arrangements.  Hoping the potty training happens quickly, but he’s doing pretty well so far.  What’s interesting, and what you may have guessed from the title of my post, is that Casper’s origins don’t appear to be quite as pristine as everyone had thought!  It doesn’t matter a bit to me, because rescues often have origins that are a little mysterious, and we’d originally been looking at a mutt anyway.  But there are a few things about Casper that aren’t quite Pyr.  Rather than having the classic Pyrenees double dew claws on his hind legs, he has…none.  that’s usually a good indication there’s something else in there.  But apart from that, his ears aren’t quite as long and seem to want to stand up (I love his one wonky ear that’s nearly standing up half the time), his face is a bit more refined and, well, wolf-like, AND, the best indicator of what else in lurking in his genes, one of his eyes is parti-colored, meaning there’s a small blotch of near-white on one brown eye.  Know what the only breed that has those eyes is?

Yep, looks like Casper has a bit of Husky in him.  And if his looks didn’t give it away, the way he howled along with an ambulance siren yesterday would have!  So our new baby is a Great Pyrenees Husky, and looks a lot like a big white wolf.  Fitting, huh?  I wouldn’t have it any other way!  Hope you all had a great weekend too

Morning, everyone!  So as you might expect, yes, we all survived what they’re calling “Snowmageddon” in good shape.  Plenty of accumulation (and one of the Catholic schools had the roof cave in from all the snow), but I’ve seen worse.  This is what happens when you hail from near the Canadian border and the Great Lakes: when it comes to snowfall, I am hard to impress.  It always melts quickly enough down here, though it’s so cold that it may be a while yet.  It has been SUCH a snowy winter here!  The kids are off of school today, naturally.  AGAIN.  We didn’t get hit as badly as they did up by Baltimore, and we kept power, so I can’t complain about much except for the continuing canceled school problem.  The roads are definitely icy, courtesy of the sleet that pounded us for quite a while Friday night before changing back to snow.  I really need to get to the post office to mail off my line edits today (all done as of yesterday! WOO!), but I’ll be waiting a few hours, I think, for some melting.  Anyway, this is a picture of Saturday morning before it got incredibly nasty again (we had blizzard conditions all afternoon).  Brian bought a shiny new snowblower because he’s tired of shoveling the driveway!  It’s been a big help, that’s for sure.  Our driveway is really long, which is great until it gets covered.  Here are a couple of other pictures I took from the big event:

This was during the nastiest part of the storm on Saturday.  There were quite a few times we couldn’t see this house in the picture!

More blizzard from the front of the house.  I’ll admit it, it was kind of cool for a while.  Reminded me of home!  All of our old neighbors from when I was growing up were writing me during the storm, asking how their weather got down here   I guess the Northern NY weathermen on TV were having a good laugh about the, shall we say, “Mid-Atlantic Panic”.  There was definitely much freak-outage.  Here’s a final pic from yesterday, because my patio table is a pretty good way to measure how much snow we got:

As you can probably tell from all the little paw prints, Brian had to shovel the deck for the dogs.  The short leg thing wasn’t working so well for them in the snow!

Anyway, that was my weekend…how was yours?

We’re getting smacked by this Atlantic MESS here yesterday and today, so I’m trying to think happy thoughts and imagine myself in places like this.  Looking out the window is no good, it’s just pelting rain and flying garbage cans.  Had to bring in my windchimes because they were going to get wrecked and/or disappear, and I keep hearing the deck furniture moving.  Slowly.  Ominously.  It may have been possessed by whatever dark spirits are unloading this crap on the coast.  My poor dogs are all bedraggled from their brief sojourns out to do their business.  I think the cat is gloating, since he gets to stay pretty.  I keep waiting for it to let up, but nooo, not yet.  Glad my neighborhood isn’t in a flood zone, but there are a lot of them around here.  I’m only glad that we don’t live in Virginia Beach anymore, because apparently the flooding there could turn out as big a mess as Isabel back in ’03, which I was around for.  Ew, buckets of rain.  Though it was a good excuse to make a big pot of soup, I guess.

I really could go for a hammock, a tropical island, and a frozen drink.  Or some rum.  Speaking of, I will leave you for the weekend (well, I’m not leaving, I’m just going to parked on my ass in the middle of a lake, I think) with a video that I know is one of Ms M’s favorites.  I’ve never put it up before, though, and hey, what would a tropical island be without Johnny?  For the record, Elizabeth is still an idiot for the way she allowed her drunken bonfire evening to end.  TGIF, and have a great weekend, everyone!  I wish you sun

Hard to believe, but another summer has slipped away.  In the week I was gone, Southern Maryland has very definitely moved into early autumn, with a few trees beginning to show faint hints of color.  The temperature is no longer unbearable, and in the evenings and mornings has even been a little cool, depending on the day.  My lawn no longer looks scorched, but lush and green (a welcome change), and the smell in the air has shifted, ever so subtly. 

I love fall, nearly as much as I love summer, and of course for entirely different reasons.  The beginning of it always leaves me a little melancholy, though.  Probably because this is the time of year I’m most acutely aware of the rapid passage of time.  It also always leaves me a little homesick, even though my close family has all moved out of Northern New York.  The trees are a blaze of color, just like in that picture there.  The air smells of woodsmoke and ripe, decaying leaves, my very favorite smell.  The old cider mill cranks up the works, making apple cider the same way the mill has for well over a hundred years, by press.  They even fry up apple cider donuts fresh, and I can honestly say that I have never tasted anything as delicious as one of those sugared fry cakes.  I keep thinking I might make a pilgrimage back up there some year in October, just for donuts.  They’re that good:-)

I’m glad I’m living in the country again, at least.  Southern Maryland is beautiful in its own right, and I’m looking forward to seeing the leaves change and going pumpkin shopping with the kids (also to hitting Target for some decorations). 

Hard to believe I’ll have another book under my belt by winter’s end (at least if my head doesn’t explode or something), even though I’m having some foot-dragging problems this week.  Think it’s that vacation recovery.  And with some luck, maybe I’ll have yet another contracted book going.  It’s always a little terrifying, staring at work yet to be done from this side of things!  But I’ll get it done, and no doubt miss the characters I create when I’m through.  So today is about Dru the vampiress and Meresin the flamethrowing angel, and hopefully I’ll get them right where I want them by the time I’m through.  Characters are stubborn creatures, imaginary though they are. 

So what do you have planned for fall?  Is it a season you enjoy?  Happy Fall, everyone!

I seem to be hosting one of the signs of the Apocalypse on my redbud trees.  Behold the Puss caterpillar, utter freak of nature, eater of trees, and furry little SOB.  I had no freaking clue what these hairy things were the other day when I noticed them clinging to the pretty, heart-shaped leaves of the young redbuds lining my driveway.  They weren’t moving, so I figured them for somme sort of bizarre cocoon.  WRONG.  After some online research (seriously, what did I do before teh Google?) I discovered that not only is this an actual caterpillar, albeit one that doesn’t move much, but this is the worst offender amongst a cruel and accursed segment of the caterpillar population known as stinging caterpillars.

Yeah, they have all that fur, luring the unsuspecting to pet them.  And then…intense pain radiating through your body, possible shortness of breath, even a possible trip to the hospital.  It’s not always that bad, depending on both the human and the bug, but even in a best case scenario these little buggers cause hours of pain at the contact site and one hell of a welt.  Some of the hair beneath that fur are full of a toxin, you see, designed to keep birds from munching on them.  The Puss isn’t actually stinging you on purpose, but does it really matter?  Also, what asshole thought these looked like kitties? 

So yeah, I am now playing host to Satan’s Caterpillars.  At least it’s not a plague of locusts, but still.  Did I have to get the WORST of the stinging caterpillars?  Oh, and they brought buddies.  I have White Flannel Moth caterpillars, which are tiny and also marginally hairy, skeletizing the redbud leaves as well.  Those little suckers sting too, though not as badly.  The Puss will winter here in a cocoon and emerge in the spring as a Flannel Moth, a very funky and furry moth that is actually sort of cool and to my knowledge doesn’t cause anyone pain.  Until then, however, I think I’m stuck with the evil clinging to my trees.  The general recommendation is to leave them alone, since they’re not known to kill anything.

Great. :-/

Hope you all have a great day…my kids are currently upstairs trying to destroy one another, but ah, today is Open House, and tomorrow…tomorrow the doors the the school will open wide, and a choir of angels will burst into the Hallelujah Chorus, and all will be well at long last!