I bought and read the hardback over ten years ago. Somehow my collection went away. Did I sell it before moving? I can’t remember. But I remember enjoying the story and the movies. But one thing I hated about the whole enterprise was how male-heavy it was. With it written by a woman, you would think that she could have brought it around to a female point of view instead of making fun of the most brilliant girl in the room and making McGonagle mean.
I listened to this Audible version because I needed a light read for bedtime. I’ve been reading some pretty heavy non-fiction during the day that I knew I couldn’t read before bed.
The narrator, Jim Dale, did a reasonably decent job of most of the voices. But he was not good at the female voices. As seems to be the case, males doing female voices always sound like they are making fun of the females.
All in all, though, it did make going to sleep easier. I knew where the story was going, so it soothed me to sleep.
A classroom of students shuffled as they pulled textbooks from backpacks. Books pounded the desks. Pages fluttered as everyone found their places.
Sue moaned quietly. Not another story of rainbows and unicorns. Well, the unicorns were fine but why did they think all girls wanted princesses and all that fluff.
If Sue wrote a story, there would be peasant girls. There were more of them than the spoiled, weak, brainless royalty.
A pheasant walked by. It seemed to want to make sure of spelling. “Hhhhhh.”
“I’m not writing about beautiful birds this time, thank you.” Sue was always polite.
“I want a story about dragons. Smart dragons. Not a knight or sword in sight.” Her pencil raced across the page. “Who needs royalty?”
Suddenly the girl next to her kicked her desk. “Psst!” She hissed. Sue was always jealous of her friend. She always had that perfect pageboy.
Suddenly, she had a young page telling the dragon how to slip by the castle unnoticed.
Her pencil drew the scene. One line squiggled wrong. She erased, blew off the eraser bits.
Her friend coughed. “I’m sorry!” Sue said as she smoothed her friend’s hairdo.
“Sue, look. We’ve turned the page.”
Sue caught up and saw a picture of a dragon holding a young person who was reading an announcement.
I promised to take a picture to prove our new happiness. Here ya go:
I cropped out the car license plates. But–Yay!
My husband and I had a great time shopping. They had almost everything we needed at far less than shopping the little stores here, with more room and less crowded. They had been picked over during the week. But I was happy to find things to help my new addiction. No. There were no Diamond Art sets, but tape, frames, Command Strips, tons of acrylic paints, etc. Lots of food, though overwhelming amount of snack foods. But gotta keep the locals happy. I’m sure you’ve all seen Dollar Generals. But here,
Here is our post office. It is quaint. Though door-to-door delivery doesn’t happen. We have to walk (7 miles round trip) or drive to pick it up. By the way, in spring and summer there are beautiful flowers surrounding this sweet community meeting place.
Our little hamlet could stand for a bit of improvement.
Don’t get me wrong, I love living in the country. But the biggest reason most move here is housing. It is less expensive. It doesn’t take long to realize that jacked up prices at local stores, the 150 miles to a cheaper store costs in gas to get there. For us $50 gas for every trip. And the $100 to change to snow tires for a couple months then rinse repeat in Spring. Well, I guess you can understand why many of us are so excited for such a humble addition to our community.
Add to the excitement of the new store the Friday Friends chat, it was a great day!
NaNoWriMo is doing another group push. It’s called Now What 2022. It helps to have these things to try to kick me in the butt to get my editing and more writing done. So for my own accountability, I’m keeping track of words as I add my second Haven book back into the newest version of Writer. I wrote this and Haven back when the program was newish. yWriter5. We are now to yWriter7. I am nothing but redundant in my saving my WIP. So I consistently save the day’s writing in that program to RTF. Now decades later, I am glad I did that.
In this case, I can find my book, Haven Above and Beyond, open it in Word, and then use Grammarly to help me weed through and make a better version, if not rewrite the whole thing to make more sense. And as I enter it into a new yWriter7 project, I can count the word as I paste the worked-out bit in. I set my goal to 25,000 words. I have a few of my other books set up with the same goal because I might feel like moving around. I am not good at editing. I love the adventure of imagining a new story. But jumping into the mess and fixing what already played out as a movie in my mind, I miss a lot, and fixing things just doesn’t come easily. So the word count to date is 2,949. There are two scenes within that that are entirely yellow highlighted as I hate how it reads and will have to totally rewrite them. That’s okay. I’m glad I can see the awful within that movie.
So between editing, Diamond Painting, making a new charity hat while watching Sweet Magnolias, Duolingo, finding the moments to walk or play the recorder, and having a high need dog, I can get pretty turned around. I am grateful to be retired, with nothing but time. But there is never enough even without a job hogging it up.
Oh! Did I mention that in our tiny little community that had one gas station/convenience store and a tiny grocery store, both of which are charging twice as much as they used to, and even then, they were high? We just got a Dollar General. My son and brother went the other day. They came home and told me that it was a TARDIS of a shop, bigger on the inside. My husband and I plan to check it out tomorrow. Who knew, back in my big city days that I would be this excited to go into a Dollar General?
“If you hear a voice within you say, ‘You cannot paint,’ then by all means paint, and that voice will be silenced”
—Vincent van Gogh
Badge by Laura @ riddlefromthemiddle.com
Per Linda:
If you would like to participate in this prompt, feel free to use the “One-Liner Wednesday” title in your post, and if you do, you can ping back here to help your blog get more exposure. To execute a pingback, just copy the URL in the address bar on this post, and paste it somewhere in the body of your post. Your link will show up in the comments below. Please ensure that the One-Liner Wednesday you’re pinging back to is this week’s! Otherwise, no one will likely see it but me.
NOTE: Pingbacks only work from WordPress sites. If you’re self-hosted or are participating from another host, like Blogger, please leave a link to your post in the comments below.
As with Stream of Consciousness Saturday (SoCS), if you see a pingback from someone else in my comment section, click and have a read. It’s bound to be short and sweet.
Unlike SoCS, this is not a prompt so there’s no need to stick to the same “theme.”
The rules that I’ve made for myself (but don’t always follow) for “One-Liner Wednesday” are:
1. Make it one sentence.
2. Try to make it either funny or inspirational.
3. Use our unique tag #1linerWeds.
4. Add our lovely badge to your post for extra exposure!
I knew I’d finish the slipper socks today. Yay! I am happy they are slightly too small. I love how soft they are. I’d be tempted to write them off for me. 😏
I can’t remember what this yarn is called. It’s great for baby things, especially blankets.
I used a KB Flexee Fine-gauge loom divided into 2 40 peg looms. Though I used a Kitchener cast-on, I wouldn’t do that again. This yarn breaks too easily to do the pulling needed to make the toe. I think for slippers I would use a drawstring cast-on. You don’t have to pull so hard to form a toe.
A Flat-knit stitch was used for most of the sock. German short-rows formed the heels. Then I continued the flat-knit stitch for another six inches.
I chose not to do a two-by-two ribbed cuff because this yarn doesn’t work well with fancy. And I was so distracted I couldn’t keep track even though the loom was marked for it. I think the roll down ankle cuff will be nice for someone.
I’ve grown to love the crochet cast-off though it can be hard to lift the loop off the peg with the loom-knitting tool to catch onto the crochet hook. One distraction and I could lose the stitch or break yarn or lose track of where I left off. Especially with this yarn.
There was enough yarn to at least start the brim of a hat. The two 40 peg looms together make a large 80 peg loom for an adult hat. As I said, this yarn doesn’t rib well so I’m hoping to do a fold up brim. I don’t know if I have enough of this for a full hat. But if not I’m sure there’s something in the charity yarn I can finish with.
Always a bit of an adventure in the world of yarn!
Because I don’t like sarcasm or facetious remarks, I’ll forgo the #JusJoJan for this last day.
I don’t know if I shared the black painted “framed” *TARDIS in Starry Night.
Didn’t get the whole picture but I think you get the idea. Now I need to pick up some Command Strips to hang it on the wall.
Here’s a little for those who haven’t crossed paths with Doctor Who.<— Wiki
Here is the progress on my newest diamond project. In five days I’ve manage the lower right, of the sandy beach of Beach Sunset. The whole preview on the right. Sideways. This one is worked horizontally and sideways. I need to use the straightener to get my lines more even.
The slipper socks are nearly finished. I’m still working the cuffs.
This book will stay with me for a while. Erin Spencer (Narrator) made me feel like I was right there, on the trail, soaking wet or extremely tired. Sometimes a narrator is so good that you think it has to be the author as they seem to maintain the cadence of the written speech as if it were their own. It was fantastically done.
That means the writing was natural and felt genuine. This was a journal of sort of the hiker, Carrot Quinn. She was honest and told the good and the bad of her travels. There were times that I laughed out loud at what happened. And there were tears of seeing the incredible scenery and tears of hurt along the way.
I have to admit I want to do this. But it seems so far away from possible when just getting the dog and I out for our mile walk is tough. A windy day will keep us in. Rain is my dog’s least favorite. She won’t go out, yet I have the raincoat and boots and plenty of umbrellas. Snow is my favorite, but my dog can’t handle it very long, even with coat and pad coverings, so we walk around the yard. So much for my trek.
So it is fun to live vicariously through those who do the long hikes or marathons. Inspiration helps with daily life and gives hope for more.
Done with the dots and Mod Podge. Tomorrow, black paint framing.
Yesterday, I kitted up the new project.
Here’s the preview and key.
The ‘diamonds’ come in little packets. With this project it’s even better as they are in little ziplock bags. The numbers correspond to the key on the canvas.
One side of cellophane bag.The other side.
I have these containers that I think are less dumpable. So I labeled per key.
Progress so far.
And knitting is still keeping me out of trouble. This pair going to the charity. I’ll give the play by play when finished.
So soft. I wish they fit me! Not really. I feel good that someone might feel more comfortable in their life.
Working on my series: Haven.
Doodler (zendoodle.com)
Music major: voice and piano
Mom of four great adults
Reiki II practitioner
I have been on disability/retired for 10 years now from depression, anxiety and fibromyalgia.
Books, games, music, and life — filtered through the mind of a writer, drummer, and philosopher who thinks too deeply about all of it. If it moves something in your chest, I'm interested.
Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone by J.K. Rowling
Darswords 
You must be logged in to post a comment.