distractions Archives - Author K. Williams

Blue’s Green Thumbs – Open Book Blog Hop #296

October 25, 2021 By Captain Maiel

♦Welcome to another edition of the Open Book Blog Hop!♦

Topic #296
Do any of your characters garden? Or keep houseplants? How about you?

Welcome back to another Open Book Blog Hop! The authors included in this ongoing series wish to thank you for your reads. We appreciate, even more so, when you share our writings with your friends. If you’re new to the series, welcome aboard. The authors engage and impress weekly. Prepare to become a regular reader.

A four-foot lemon tree sits in my front window, grown from a seed I found in a store bought lemon. It has never fruited. The large pot it resides in is its third house. Fertilizer spikes and plenty of water, along with daily warm and bright sun haven’t bore a single fruit, nor flower. I have yet to figure out why the tee is unhappy. It has gorgeous healthy green leaves and is filling out every year. Those leaves smell like lemons, too. Maybe someday I’ll get it and get some lemons.

Marigolds in the author's garden, they're yellow edged with burgundy, bright green leaves. — My marigolds.

Someday, too, I hope that I’ll get to see the gads of lemons in Italy. My great grandfather migrated from Naples to Upstate New York at the turn of the 20th-century, a mere boy, but a love of lemons came with him, I believe. This passed to me, despite being from an indirect line.

Bamboo plants adorn my room (along with one in the living room beside the television), a giant aloe vera sits in the bow window with a new watermelon plant to keep it viny company. I wasn’t about to let the lone survivor of a rabbit raid die alone in the dirt. I rescued it in a pot. Maybe it will survive the winter, too. The backyard is inundated with tomato plants. They now grow without needing to plant. I have lilacs, a rose of Sharon, morning glories, butterfly bushes, climbing roses that don’t rose, tulips, hyacinth, daffodil, delphinium, crocus, ground ivy, the ubiquitous hostas, and a blue flower I forget the name of at this moment. The hollyhocks fought to rise, but again–rabbits.

There’s a lot of green around and I’ve gotten a bit of a reputation for being a Poison Ivy (yes, the Batman villain). I do have red hair, and I do respect plants as lives, as much as any other life on the plant. Green isn’t my favorite color, though. I can’t imagine dressing in a green plant suit!

Having written a number of books, gardening and it’s benefits have not come up much. You won’t find Maiel occupying herself with a garden, although there are garden like features around her home. Likewise, this isn’t a pastime of Claire either. She’s a city girl who’s been busy at finishing school. I don’t think she’s much for hobbies, anyway–unless you count her sleuthing.

Then, there is Emily, the young Miss Conrad from my first novel, who raises many a garden plant in her greenhouse, heated for the harsh Vermont winters. The main point is to provide flowers to the Conrad home, something the Conrad women have occupied themselves with since the farm’s inception. Emily has taken up this mantle, forcing crocuses to bloom weeks earlier than they would in the outdoors. The little blooms make a nice feature in the starkness of late winter, to keep moods high.

Emily is known for her touch of healing. She’s a born doctor of human or animal. Somehow, she is able to nurse the sick with remarkable success. This power, it seems, extends to even vegetable. Is it her energy? Does she just understand the science behind medicine? I never went into any great detail about that. Emily hasn’t studied medicine yet, but has extensive experience nursing. The greatest thing she ever did was remain at Hettie’s side and make sure that the wounds she suffered did not take her young and valuable life. Even though Emily didn’t know this woman was a wife and mother, a great hero for surviving trials as a slave and aiding those on the railroad in defiance of slavery, Emily knew Hettie had to be saved.

Although it’s never discussed, it is possible that Emily has grown herbs and other plants in the greenhouse to use as medicine. After all, it is the 1860s, and doctors were few and far between, with hospitals at great distances. Most homes made due with what they had and the familial knowledge they passed down. Is it possible that Emily is a green witch? Very. But this is never said. Can you imagine, with her deeply religious mother, who also keeps time in the greenhouse? What if Mrs. Conrad were one as well? Perhaps there’s another story to uncover there–an unwritten Easter egg for my ancestors and living brethren.

Regardless of what ifs, Emily does love plants and growing them in a garden, just as much as I do. It helps to keep my spirits high, and to connect with something greater than society and all its problems. Neither of us would commit crimes in the name of the plant world, however. Yet, I can see Emily lamenting the abuse of forests as much as I.

Let’s click on the links below to find out if any of our other authors garden or include the practice in their work and how that might manifest.

Open Book Blog Hop banner, an old white farm chair sits in a green field with a pot of pale yellow flowers and a cloth.

Stay On Target – Open Book Blog Hop #208

January 20, 2020 By Captain Maiel

♦Welcome to another edition of the Open Book Blog Hop!♦

Topic #208
What are your top three distractions and how do you deal with them?

Welcome back to another edition of the Open Book Blog Hop! The authors included in this ongoing series wish to thank you for your reads. We appreciate, even more so, when you share our writings with your friends. If you’re new to the series, welcome aboard. The authors engage and impress weekly. Prepare to become a regular reader.

Distractions aren’t just excuses for not getting work done. They’re very real obstacles. Every writer, or would be writer, usually faces a barrage of these that derail their project—daily. I don’t look down upon the person who tells me they’ve always wanted to write a book, and I do not look down upon the person who gives up on writing again, or the scheduling writer, or the pantsing-it writer. We all face different hurdles to the goal of writing, and we each come with our personal capacity to meet those goals.

A great many things can happen to stop a project from ever being started, or from preventing another project to get underway. My natural desire to procrastinate has been a usual suspect. In more recent years, I have not had to deal with it because I have plenty to get in my way. So what are my top three?

I have a toddler.
I am a single mother.
I have a dog.

The first really needs no explanation, because most people understand the amount of work involved with caring for a toddler. My daughter is 2, going on 3 in the summer. She requires constant supervision and guidance. The thing is, I want to spend all this time with her. She was a struggle to have, as I had to go through IVF to conceive, and I had waited a long time (42 years old) before having her, in the hopes of marrying first. When that did not come to pass, I had my daughter alone.

That leads me to my second distraction: being a single mother. There’s no one else here to take care of any of the things that need to get done. I am the sole source of income, the housekeeper, cook, and caretaker. In order for me to work, my child is enrolled in daycare. Drop off and pick up takes time, work takes time. All the housekeeping is my duty, and there is a lot of laundry from my little lady. There are baths to give, teeth to brush, a butt to wipe, a mouth to feed, a wriggly energy ball to dress, and lots of entertainment (play, learning, etc). to be had.

On top of all of that, I have a dog. He’s super patient, but he has needs much like a child. He has to go outside to go to the bathroom. He has to be fed. He desires companionship, which could mean cuddles or play. All of that can be mostly scheduled, but you know that random needs come as they will.

These things might seem like nothing, but the single parent factor changes a lot of the dynamic. If I had a partner, I’m sure he’d take some of the burden off my shoulders, like walking Fionn and feeding him while I take care of preparing a meal. When I need to do laundry or shower, he’d be there to watch my daughter. The entertaining would be shared, and so on. But then, he’d probably be quite a distraction to add to the mix.

There’s always going to be something that pulls our attention in other directions. So, do the best you can.

Please check out the answers of the other authors in the hop by clicking on the links below. We appreciate your taking part in the hop and hope to see you hear next week!

So you want to learn German – So dass Sie wollen Deutsch lernen #16

June 6, 2016 By Captain Maiel

So you want to learn German? You’re going to need some resources…

When is the best time to study?

Let me tell you, trying to do your language studies right before bed has been the most ineffective thing I have undertaken in this journey yet. I am sure it has to do with the science of memory and boo to me for not being aware of this. You see, your short term memory is banked in separate part of the brain from where permanent memory is kept. This is why diseases of the memory seem to pop up such strange things like memories from when people were three, small details being lost or magnified, behavioral anomalies.

I don’t pretend to be a psychiatrist or neurologist.

That said, I am here to recount my experience in learning a new language as an adult. My last entries discussed the negative impact of hormones and pregnancy on the memory and learning. This time, I am going to talk about being tired and sleeping right after undertaking lessons.

When I first started, I never put down the Duolingo app I am using. It’s like a little game and it’s very easy to access. I was moving right along, other than struggling to remember the articles that went with some words. I still misstep there from time to time, because it has been so long since I’ve seen that particular noun and I second guess myself. (And, need I mention the irritating auto-correct that gets me marked wrong all the time.)

With those first few months, I also tended to take my lessons in the late afternoon during a second wind. Often, I was making dinner and to keep myself distracted before I snacked and spoiled my dinner, I would take my lessons. At that time I was much more alert than you’d expect after a day of work. I had just driven home, walked the dog for a twenty minutes and was ready to go again. The lull of the workday afternoon had passed and my brain was ready for more.

Come winter, that sort of got smushed around. The cold prevented regular walks, due to ice and intolerable temperatures for me and dog (besides, you must be careful with their paws out there, between freezing and the salt, they can get injured). At that time I was also winding up another book, the sequel to OP-DEC: Operation Deceit. Promoting all of my other publications and keeping up the blog takes time as well, and I have to cram that all in later in the day, once I am home from my job. Thus, my lessons were being pressed later and later.

The moments I still had free were at night as I settled down for bed. I would watch Netflix and try to cram in a lesson, even taking fewer to get something instead of nothing. Not only were hormones making it difficult to remember, but I was taking my lessons as quickly as possible and fewer, on top of going to bed right on top of it.

So the lesson is, don’t take your language lessons last thing at night. Do them when you are energized and not distracted. These things mixed with offset hormones does the language learner no favors.

Be sure to spend more than a few minutes a day dedicated to your lessons.
Do those lessons early in the day.
If you can’t do them earlier in the day, take a short walk first to get your energy back up.
Don’t take a nap right after your lesson. Let your brain have time to shuffle things into long term memory.
Skip the Netflix in the background.

Stay tuned for more tools, tips and discussions on Learning German.