judyreene

email me

2012-01-12T18:34:00.000-05:00

I have gotten, over the past few weeks, some wonderful email from fans of my books and have tried to answer through this blog, but being the technoboob that i am, i don't know how to respond to comments. Sooo - please go to my webpage, http://www.judyreenesinger.com/ and email me through that. To the gal who sent me some lovely poetry and who knew Tusker, upon whom Inconvenient Elephant was based, yes i would love to send you a book. To the gal who wants me to join her in Thailand, i am considering it. To the gal who wants to sell me a horse, maybe. email me, folks, it's so much easier than rousing me from my sloth and actually making me write a blog. love to all,
judy

oh my, where have i been?

2011-11-02T13:34:00.000-05:00

well, breaking promises to post frequent and entertainingly funny blogs, for one. and writing more books. and gloating with pleasure because my last book, An Inconvenient Elephant was chosen as one of the books to be advertised along with the Ipad and Iphone for a whole season. It was on tv and on big posters plastered all over subway stations and bus terminals and various phone service stores. what a thrill, really, to see it.
I had some surgery, traveled a bit, wrote a bit, lost some weight, put it back on, lost it again, went blond (never fall asleep while an enthusiastic hairdresser is doing your hair), spent some time getting used to being blonde (more on that later- blondes really do have more fun) and wrote some more. i also made a promise to myself to do more things in new york city since i only live an hour away by car. one thing is to see warhorse. have you seen it?
will write some more tomorrow.
p.s. also happy because Bob Barker, of TV fame, along with some terrific animal rights people (like Pat Derby and Ed Stewart from PAWS) are launching a bill in Congress that will change the lives of circus animals for the better.
talk to you soon.
smoochies,
judy

Go Daddy is Gone

2011-04-08T15:26:00.002-05:00

I am actually mortified for Bob Parsons, CEO of Go Daddy. His arrogance, his total lack of understanding of ecology, politics, conservation and the nature of animals, embarrasses me. His juvenile behavior and lack of respect for what was a majestic living creature, is disgusting beyond belief.
Bob Parsons, for those of you who don't know, entertains himself with a yearly trip to Zimbabwe in order to kill a wild elephant. For fun. "It's just an old bull elephant," he proclaimed during the four minute snuff film he provided the media with, and then tried to justify his actions by adding that bull elephants were interchangeable and one more dead bull wouldn't have any effect on the social structure of the herd. Those of us who know elephants know this is bullshit. Old bull elephants teach young bulls how to behave. With aggressive behavior on the rise from these creatures, it is very important to keep their social structure intact. Who knows if the trauma inflicted from these untimely deaths could even be the trigger. And, according to Joyce Poole, Director of Research and Conservation at ElephantVoices, who has studied elephants for over 30 years under elephant expert, Cynthia Moss, the slaughtered elephant was a young female. That creates sort of a problem for Parsons who apparently likes to come across as the Great White Hunter, but was unable to tell that the elephant he slaughtered didn't have male genitalia. Whoops. And this is a double tragedy because elephants live in a matriarchal society,. There's no telling how far reaching this death will be. Next, Parsons tried to paint himself the philanthropist who is merely helping feed a starving village. When Piers Morgan, an interviewer for CNN asked Parsons why he, a billionaire, didn't just donate some money to educate and feed the village outright, Parsons blinked and replied that didn't see the link.
Parsons just doesn't get it. The land is becoming very scarce in Africa. The elephants are being pushed out of their grazing areas and off their migration routes. Killing them one by one is not the solution. Maybe Parsons can put his gun down and use his head and come up with something that is sustainable and correct. Maybe help fund some kind of elephant proof farming, or help set up crop areas outside elephant migration routes. Standing with his foot and gun resting on an innocent creature, tortured and slaughtered, is beyond disgraceful. It shows a lack of insight, of humanity, of compassion, and unfortunately displays a lack of intelligence that leaves him far below the level of those animals he preys upon.
My website has been removed from Go Daddy and will be up and running in a few days on another host. I salute all those wonderful people who have done the same. Go Daddy can go fuck himself.

I'm finally getting around to writing about procrastination

2011-03-28T11:34:00.000-05:00

You may have noticed that several of my posts are out of order because they had been half written waaay back when i injured my eye and was having laser surgery. I never finished writing them because i couldn't see very well. well, today, after deciding that i was going to straighten out all my posts, i finished them and published them, which meant, of course, they were put out of sequence to the original post. now, no one, including me, knows what i'm talking about, so don't worry about it. i don't think i can fix it, since i can't fix anything that has to do with computers. my advice is to use your imaginations and try to figure out what i meant, and i will do the same.
and i promise never to do that again.
sorry

Still Healing

2011-03-28T11:29:00.000-05:00

So the eye is healing. the blobs that were bouncing around and obscuring my sight are receding back to blobland where they can be called upon to bother someone else. i'm told it's going to be a few months before everything is okay, but i am cool with that. I can drive, i can write, i certainly can eat, i can kiss my doggies and chat with my friends, so they are not interfering one bit with my life.
And i love my new earrings. snicker.

Still Waiting for the Earrings

2011-03-28T11:27:00.000-05:00

As pitiful as i tried to appear, my significant other did not come up with diamond or any other kind of earrings. He is not the kind of person who gets hints. Even if they are painted on billboards and say "JUDY WANTS THIS FROM YOU. BUY THIS AS A GIFT FOR HER!" he will not see it, if he sees it, he won't understand it, if he understands it, he'll forget all about it by the time he takes his next breath. Clearly I am going to have to treat myself.
I'm getting tastefully big ones.

A High Price to Pay

2011-03-28T11:22:00.000-05:00

Chimps are cute. Baby chimps are high on the cuteness scale, up there with puppies and kitties. They don't do it on purpose, they are just cute because they are small and cuddly and our brains are hardwired to respond to that. And it's okay. The result is that we take care of our young and have long domesticated puppies and kitties. All of them, kids, dogs, cats, fit into our homes, our lifestyles, our beds. What doesn't fit are wild animals who are forced to give up their natural behavior by nutcases who think they can turn them into the cyootest pets around. The outcome is sooo predictable. The darling little chimpie, or tiger, or cuddly bear matures and becomes - well - what it had always been, a large, powerful, aggressive WILD ANIMAL! Sah-prize, sah-prize!! A chimp has the strength of five men, grows to about two hundred pounds (don't take my word for it, check out the Jane Goodall site) and has very specific needs to be a healthy, well adjusted animal. And i don't mean pink diapers and pizza for dinner.
So, of course, some clodbrain raises a chimp and after years of poor diet and confinement, the poor chimp isn't doing so well. What does clodbrain do? Does she take the animal to a vet? NAh - that would be - gasp - responsible, but we know she isn't because she's house raising a chimp! So she gives him Xanax, even there is no veterinary evidence that it's even good for this species, and duh - the poor creature goes insane and eats the face off her good friend. Guess who dies in the end? Guess who pays for clodbrain's poor judgement.
Hint: It wasn't clodbrain.

The Great Clam Caper

2011-03-23T16:14:00.001-05:00

I really want to be a total vegetarian, I really do, but occasionally I have been known to lapse. And when i lapse, it's because of clams. I love clams. I love them fried, in chowders, I love them stuffed, steamed or raw. I excuse it by thinking: of all the things I could cheat with, clams strike me as the most innocuous. Maybe because the no-face issue doesn't really apply to them, and I eat them once in a while without all the guilt and ethical dilemmas that the other stuff seems to present. So when they were featured in a local supermarket last week, big mesh bags of clams sitting resolutely and stoically in their black shells on mountains of ice, I dithered for a few minutes in front of the fish department before I finally bought them.
The cashier put them in a separate bag, away from the skim milk I also bought, the butter substitute. the Greek yogurt, and the no-flavor-no-color- puffy wheat thingies-the-size-of-hubcaps-but-only-12-calories that i snack on, and home I went. I had visions of clam chowder, of stuffed clams, of fritters. After all, there were over three dozen, all waiting to be turned into a culinary experience.
Except I don't know a thing about clams.
I know nothing about keeping them - uh - alive- until you ate them. And i had been strictly warned by the fish monger to keep them alive or they would poison me, a sort of clammy revenge. Keep them on ice, I was told, until you are ready to cook them. Be very careful, I was told, because if they open their mouths, that's the end of it, it's too late. It all sounded quite nervewracking. I had never considered that there would be handling problems, but that was because i had never prepared clams. When i want clams, I just go out to a restaurant and order them and they appear a few minutes later, all done up with cocktail sauce and little round crackers and lemon. I didn't know you had to be a clam wrangler.
    So, I put them on the kitchen counter and stared at them. They stared back. Or at least it seemed that they did. I started to worry about them. I felt like I had brought home three dozen pets and I was responsible for their welfare. I decided they looked too dry, too thirsty, and put them into a big pot, filled the pot with water and went on the internet to find out how to keep them happy and healthy until - uh they were - uh - you know - cooked.
    The first thing i learned is that they are not fresh water animals. They needed salt water. What had I done! What havoc was i wreaking upon their poor little salt water bodies with my well water.
     "Oh no!" I shrieked and raced into the kitchen to quickly brew something more habitable.
     My daughter, Robin, was watching me. "Are you sure you're up for this?" she asked. "Remember the lobsters?" Indeed I did.
    When she was about twelve, her father brought home several huge lobsters for dinner. Following his instructions, i put them into a big pot and put the pot on the stove to boil. A few minutes later, they had lifted the lid and climbed out of the pot, leapt off the stove, a la Annie Hall, and were skittering across the floor, pissed as all hell. At least it seemed like that to me. I remember staring down at them too, like I had with the clams and feeling the same kind of sympathy and guilt. But dinner was dinner. I picked them up and put them back into the pot, they climbed out again. I had come face to face with a moral dilemma. Did I have the right to end their lives like this? It was cruel. I grabbed them around their waists and carefully put them into a shopping bag, ordered the kids into the car and drove to the Long Island Sound, which at the time, was a mile or two from our house. We stood at the water's edge as I opened the bag. The lobsters crawled out slowly, waved their whiskers in the air, maybe smelling the fresh sea air and dashed for the open water. My kids cheered. The lobsters were cheering - I'm pretty sure - and i was crying as some one hundred dollars worth of dinner disappeared into the undertow. We had spaghetti that night, but i knew i did the right thing.
Which leads me back to the clams.
They were looking a little peaked by now. Some of them had their mouths open. I poured the water out and filled a shopping bag with ice and picked them up, one by one, and put them on the ice.
     "They're pretty sandy," I commented to my daughter.
     "I think you have to run them through water," she said, "like giving them a bath. And you have to scrub them."
     I looked at them doubtfully. "Scrub them?" I repeated.
     "With a brush," she said. "To clean them."
     It was like a clam spa. I brushed them very gently, even their undersides, and patted them dry with my best fuzzy kitchen towel and put them on a bed of ice to nap the night away while I considered what to do with them. I put them to sleep in the fridge.
     The next morning they all had their mouths open. It was the end of them, it was too late. I had a mass clam passing on my hands.
    "Did you tie the plastic grocery bag shut around them?" my daughter asked.
     "Of course," I said. "I wanted to give them some privacy in the refrigerator. You know, i have about a dozen eggs in there. You know how eggs are. Nosy. They're into everything."
     "That's what went wrong," she said. "They suffocated. They need air."
     Clams need air? Is nothing simple?
     "You may as well put them outside for the raccoons," my daughter said. I did.
    Apologizing to them one by one, I tossed three dozen clams, over the garden fence so that the wild raccoons that live out there somewhere could have clams on the half shell, maybe with those cute little round crackers and coctail sauce. I had been responsible for the untimely demise of three dozen innocent sea creatures. It was awful. They had spent the night cold and airless.
    But at least they were clean.

The Friday Nite Movie gang

2010-08-03T16:24:00.002-05:00

It started about five years ago.
My Friday nights had been solitary ones.
And Friday night, to me was always a night of anticipation. The end of the work week needs to be celebrated because a nice, fresh weekend is on the horizon. There is only so much creative juice one can manufacture in the course of a week, so writing another chapter for my book didn't appeal to me. I wanted to be entertained. Sitting alone Friday nights and eating the remains of lunch while watching telly reruns that I never liked in the first place, wasn't cutting it, so I grabbed the newspaper, checked out the local theaters and set off for the movies. I bought a medium popcorn and a bottle of water for my dinner and i was blissed out. It didn't matter what the movie was about, the screen could have been blank, for all I cared. I was away from my office, out of the house, and freeee.
Two or three years passed this way and I was happy.
Enter my daughter. "Mind if I come?" she asked. No problem. We hit the early show, she ate M&M's and shared a medium popcorn with me. We drank water and we blissed out together .
Good things like this catch on.
First, my friend Maria asked to join us. Then my friends Richie and Jackie, soon followed by Larry and Estelle, and Alex, and Gene, and occasionally my eighty-nine year old mother (who thought the actors looked very thin in Avatar. "That's Hollywood for you," she sniffed. "They have to starve themselves for their roles." I didn't have the heart to remind her that it was an animation.)
Of course, things have taken on a little more structure over time. Evolved, you might say. There were a lot of us, and now I send out emails addressed to the Movie Gang, detailing the movie i have chosen for the week - my word is law - though I do consider special requests. I sign my emails "Queen of the Cinema" and add an ominous and unoriginal "Be there or be square" at the bottom. We have added dinner to the evening's activities, usually meeting in the food court next to the cinema, and happily stuff in on the awful junk food to be found in malls. Diets go out the window, our Movie Gang members (which have gone as high as nineteen) take up entire tables. After food, we troop off to the movie in giddy spirits. When the movie is over, we caravan to the local diner for post-movie analysis, drink buckets of decaf coffee and order diner snacks which rival food court food in its gastronomical incorrectness. Finally, tired, satiated and completely entertained, we bid each other adieu, head off in various directions for home and career, and wait impatiently for another week to pass.
Anyone is welcome to join us. They are forewarned that they may get bombarded with an errant popcorn missile if the plot lags, chocolate snacks have to be shared, and an occasional snarky comment is not only tolerated, but encouraged. Maria howled through the entirety of the last werewolf movie, it was that bad. Shutter Island gave us all the creeps and we are still picking apart Inception, though the general vote is that he's still asleep and we all need to see it again. We loved Girl With the Dragon Tattoo and loved almost as much, discussing its symbolism. When you've got a writer or two (or sometimes three) included in the group, along with a pathologist and an internationally renowned forensics expert, an engineer, a doctorate in psychology and one in molecular biology, dissections are inevitable.
It's now Tuesday night and I'm deciding on my next opus. As usual, I will let you know Friday morning before noon. You'll get the email, so
Be there or be square.

AN INCONVENIENT ELEPHANT

2010-07-28T11:22:00.000-05:00

Hello my dumplings,
It's out. My new book, book number three, i'm happy, i love it, and i know you will, too. It's the sequel to Still Life with Elephant, although the new book stands alone as a novel.
You'll meet Diamond-Rose Tremaine, a gal from the African bush who never quite gets the hang of domestication after she gets back to the states. And you will accompany her and Neelie on another rescue mission, this time a magnificent tusker (a male elephant) to its heartwarming conclusion.
And if you order this week, i may get a chance to make it on the bestseller list. Now, wouldn't that be something!
An Inconvenient Elephant

An eye for an eye and my new book

2010-07-07T14:45:00.001-05:00

So the eye is healing, thank you to all of you who wrote me an enote either on facebook or my email and wished me good vision. I am down to just a few lonely black specks floating around the nether regions, still lots of blurriness and one spider web. I've been good about taking care of myself, doing only the heavy lifting required of holding my new book, An Inconvenient Elephant, which is coming out the end of this month. How's that for a segue? the cover looks great and i am grateful to Robin Stears of WildAss productions for designing it and putting it together. My understanding is that Robin used to rescue wild horses and donkeys, etc and named her company after those wonderful creatures. It's a delightful cover of an elephant being ridden by a woman,you can check it out up there somewhere if i didn't mess up the URL.
As you know, the weather has been beyond hot. I don't dare step outside my air conditioned office for fear of bursting into flames, it's that hot. I fully expect all those who poo-poohed global warming to immediately issue a full apology to the rest of us and jump on the band wagon to help do something about it.
Hope all your eyeballs heal, the hot weather breaks and we can get on with summer.

A Laser Light Show Sans Music

2010-06-18T15:37:00.001-05:00

The eyeball adventure continues.
I must say, when eyes act up, they are dramatic and insistent and you are wise not to ignore them, as i was trying to do. Having been reassured by an indifferent ER opthalmologist that black drapes, though possibly high fashion, were definitely not something i wanted to see, and that i had very little chance of my injury being that serious, i spent Sunday and Monday pretending that the four bazillion tiny black pindots that were floating around inside my eyeball weren't bothering me, and that i was actually having fun trying to make out shapes and faces in the black blobs that were also in there. It was a little like cloud watching, only internal.
By Tuesday, i am thinking that perhaps this wasn't the best thing to ignore, so i got myself transported to a real opthalmologist who put drops in my eyes that turned my pupils into the Holland Tunnel. He took a look around. "You definitely need to see a retinologist," he said and while i mused on how specialized doctors had become - were there pupilogists? eyelashologists? - he immediately called one and made an appointment for the next evening.
The retinologist was pleasant but insistent that I have laser surgery.
"Do i have a choice?" I asked, planning, of course, to opt out. It sounded scary.
"No," he said and popped eyeball numbing drops along with a hearty dose of atropine into my eye. We waited for it to take effect while i nervously emptied a box of gummi bears and orange flavored tic-tacs,only making myself nauseous and giddy from all the sugar.
The retinologist explained how he was going to put a disc over my eye and then fire off a laser directly INTO MY EYEBALL to mend the tear. It sounded awful.
"What are my options?" i asked.
"None," he said. "Do it or risk a detachment and go blind." That sounded ominous.
"Hmmm," I said, as i was loaded into the chair and put in front of what looked like a perfectly ordinary eyeglass examination machine. My chin was placed in a chin cup and a plunger blobbed over my eye. At least it felt like a plunger.
The first shot was fired. A green laser with the power and brightness of what seemed like five suns combined. It made cute little beeping chicken- like noises, which didn't fool me, I knew it wasn't chickens, while it fired tiny micron-size beams around the retinal tear. After a while, I imagined myself being transported to another planet, the green light flashed away as i traveled through the space-time continuum, the beeping and humming became the nuclear fusion fueled engines of my late model space ship. The green lights were followed by red circles and black holes. Mostly painless, it was a spectacular performance of medicine and art. We were finished and i was totally blind in that eye.
"Temporary," the retinologist reassured me. I could see nothing but black until he urged me to open my good eye and look around. I had forgotten that i had squinted it shut.
I didn't open the bad eye until the next morning. Things looked pretty much the way they had before the treatment, though i am told that it will take about three months for the eye to form some kind of healing bond. The eye debris will slowly go away, i was reassured, and no bending, no lifting, no aerobics (ha, i hate aerobics), no hard work until the eye healed. And, I informed my significant other, I'll need a nice pair of diamond earrings to really feel better.
i'll let you know if they work.

and the summer is just beginning

2010-06-13T09:22:00.004-05:00

So Friday, my right eye, apparently not having anything better to do, and bored with coordinating with my left eye, decided to tear a little hole in the retina and fill my eye with a medley of interesting blobs. Nothing was discussed with me beforehand, which is the usual case with my body parts. They just decide to bollocks up what was a perfectly fine and ordinary day with something dramatic, and then sit back and snigger while i go dashing off to the emergency room to get things righted again. This time, though, my right eye had a little help. About three weeks ago, I contracted some weird virus that settled in my lungs (a repeat of last year) and gave me pneumonia (thank you, lungs. i wouldn't even know of your existence, if it weren't for that periodic pneumonia). It was the dramatic and violent coughing that created a jealousy situation in the right eye. It waited quietly until I went to bed, waited quietly until my next wretched coughing fit, then neatly made a little rip in the retina. I saw a flash of light, which is not uncommon for me. I generally view flashing lights as an entertaining sign from the universe that i am overworking. I pulled the pillow over my face, watched the light show for a while, said "Cool" and fell asleep. Next morning the lights were replaced by a weird black Halloween spider sort of configuration. Since we're mid-June, and Halloween isn't traditionally until October, this raised my suspicions. Still, I went off to perform some some Satur-ly weekend chores. There were more flashing lights, ominous clouds, weird blurs and fashionable black dots, apparently seen only by me. I may have mentioned it once or twice to whomever i was sharing the day with, after which i was whisked off to the emergency room at Westchester Hospital where i was given a sonogram of the eye. After peeling off the sonogram patch and most of my right eyebrow, the ER doc notified the opthamologist on call who immediately called me back, mostly to convince me that she didn't need to make the "it'll take me hours and hours" drive from Manhattan where she lived, to Westchester (for you non-New Yorkers, it's about half an hour) and proceeded to give me a phone diagnosis without even the benefit of looking at the sonogram. Talented, that one. But she did warn me to watch for a black curtain draping across the eye, black only, nothing flamboyant, no paisley, no tacky floral prints, just your basic black. This would indicate, besides impending blindness, that the retina was getting detached, and we didn't want that. Could she reccommend a retinal specialist? Um, not really, she didn't know of any. Could she reccommend an opthalmic surgeon in case the retina decided to secede? Um, no not really. Apparently she had done her residency in a total vacuum. We hung up and she went back to bed, firmly convinced she had elevated the art of practicing medicine to even higher than usual standards, while introducing new levels of compassionate healing. I went home, waiting in dread for black drapes while my eye, satisfied it had gotten its fair due of attention, lay there smugly in my head, flashing away until we both fell asleep.

Later

2010-06-04T16:41:00.000-05:00

Damn, I've got to pull myself together. I have a list of chores to rival all the letters to santa laid end to end. i've got to update blogs, facepages, twitters, linkie things, lose weight, look up what time a movie is playing tonight, let the dogs out, wash my hair, pick up after the parrots, start reupholstering a cute little chair for the porch off my bedroom, train my four dogs to BEHAVE and maybe do some tricks, lose weight, answer twenty emails and tell everyone about my new book coming out in August. Filled with good intentions, i spend the day on the internet, researching stuff for my new book (the one after the august one). Ebay catches my eye, then an ad for an ipad. I order nuts for my parrots, my accountant calls to give me a little push to get some stuff to him, i make an appointment to get my poodles groomed. I am still filled with good intentions. A friend calls to check on the movie, my parrot bites a hole in my old comfy shoes, i need a haircut, my shih tzu gets the hiccups and needs to sit on my lap. I will get to everything. I will get it all done. I really will.
later.

I'm baaack. Finally.

2010-05-14T14:12:00.001-05:00

I had the best trip ever about three weeks ago. Two dear friends of mine and I went to San Andreas, California to visit the PAWS (Performing Animal Welfare Society) Sanctuary that houses nine elephants, several bears, and a bunch of lions and tigers (yes, i deliberately mixed up the order to avoid the Ozian "oh my"). It was both a glorious and heart rending trip. Heart rending, because every animal there had to be rescued from circumstances that were related to us by Pat Derby who owns and runs the sanctuary, and her partner, Ed Stewart. Circumstances that made my skin crawl as I listened. In fact, there were several times that I had to walk away, because i couldn't stand hearing how awful these creatures' lives had been. Glorious, because Pat and Ed have given over their own lives to provide great comfort and sustenance to each and every animal in their care.
My friends and I stayed at a quaint Victorian Inn, called the Robin's Nest, and had great food, lovely comfortable digs and crummy weather. Though we were all outside during what we New Yorkers would have called a nor'easter, none of us minded one bit. The animals, i might add, were quite comfy inside their state-of-the-art barns during the worst of it.
What wasn't so fun was a car accident on the way home from the airport. But, we're all fine, and now that I've come out of my winter hibernation, i will tell you all about it. in coming blogs. In the meantime, there are links somewhere on this page, and I urge you do donate to PAWS so that Pat and Ed can continue their great work.

Happy Thanksgiving

2009-11-25T19:53:00.004-05:00

Thanks.
To all of you. To all of you who have read my books and have taken the time to write me such wonderful emails, thank you again.
Thank you to the wonderful Dr. Rachel Colvin who saved my life when i walked into her office, gray of face and not feeling quite so right. She recognized a heart attack even if two previous doctors didn't and sent me off to the hospital where Dr. Lance Kovar fixed me up by double stenting a pipeline.
Thanks to my wonderful daughters. Jamie and Robin, for being mine. And my smart, delicious granddaughters, Rachel and Sarah.
Thanks to all my terrific, funny, irreverent, silly, outrageous friends who make me laugh.
Thanks to my fluffhead pups, the two French poodles, Lola and FlashGordon, and the two shih tzus, Sadie and Mimsie, both dumber than my bedroom slippers, but highly, excruciatingly adorable. And to my cockatoo Samantha, who sings off key, and to my African Grey parrots, Tallulah and Zodiac, who function as my office help when i'm in a pinch.
you've all made very happy. I'm glad to have you in my life.
now, eat go your turkey.

First Snow

2009-10-15T15:51:00.003-05:00

I have to think about this. It means that i definitely do not have to lose the 30 pounds I was planning to lose before i get into my bathing suit. That's a good thing. It means that i won't be walking on the beach holding hands with a sweetheart and enjoying warm breezes wafting across the Long Island Sound, and that's a bad thing. It means pumpkins, and soon after that, turkey and soon after that, picking out just the right holiday gift for loved ones, also a good thing. It also means it has opened the door to winter. And more snow. And i hate snow. Hate. Snow. I don't ski, ice skate, exult in white landscapes or want anything to do with shoveling, scraping or sculpting them. When everyone is outside frolicking and building snowmen, i'm inside, brewing hot cocoa, maybe even baking cookies and impatiently waiting for them all to come back in. If i wanted to feel frozen, i would sit inside my refrigerator where there is at least a good chance of having a pile of food next to me. I never caught onto the fun of burning, frozen fingers, numb toes, ice pinched cheeks and hat hair. My horses get stupid in cold weather. They turn into broncs, and training them or my dressage students, turns into an endurance trial.
That said, I am going to glumly make myself a cup of cocoa, grab a dog or two to keep my lap warm and sit by the window and hope it all goes away.

Technodummy

2009-10-07T11:56:00.003-05:00

That would be me.
I have tons of people who want to be my friend on Facebook and I don't know how to confirm them. In fact, I have two Facebook pages, don't know how I got them - some folks are friends on one and some are friends on another and it seems never the twain shall meet. The pages are attached to two different emails, don't know how that happened either, and neither of them link up with my LinkedIn page or my Twitter page, though when I Twitter, it all seems to get lost in that great elusive etherworld that is out there.
I am constantly defeated by my computer. When I try to log on in the morning, it refuses. "I'm too busy," it tells me. "I'm doing something important here and you'll just have to wait." And so I get myself another cup of coffee and I sit down at my desk and wait. The computer is in front of me, filing its nails and humming, totally ignoring me. I politely tap a few keys. The screen snaps a message at me. "I am busy checking for security breaches because you were foolish enough to surf all over the internet yesterday and leave a trail of e-crap for me to clean up."
"Sorry," I mumble. "When do you think you'll be through?"
"Maybe tomorrow evening." It says. "Can't promise."
I get annoyed. "But that's your job! I bought you so I could go on the internet and find things and write books."
"Ha!" The computer is starting to sound snarky now. "Write books? I see you were on ebay most of yesterday looking up earrings with blue stones."
I feel I have to defend myself. "Because I lost those blue dangly ones that I love."
"You're careless with earrings," my computer points out. "What happened to the little red roses pair that you loved so much, huh?"
I sigh. "Lost them, too."
"And you want me to make it easier for you to buy more earrings when you refuse to buy that terrific new music download for me."
"You already have a music program," I say. Then it occurs to me that I shouldn't have to argue with my computer. I shouldn't have to beg it to work for me. My toaster toasts my muffin every morning without having to be reprogrammed. My coffeemaker brews me a cup of hazelnut coffee without being begged or tweaked. My appliances run like, well, appliances, and I consider my computer a writing appliance. Maybe I'm wrong, but computers shouldn't have a life span equal to that of a fruit fly, which is roughly a day or two of a good, productive life. It shouldn't become outdated while you are unpacking it from the box. You should be able to put a piece of bread in the slot and push the lever and watch it pop back out as toast, nice and brown and warm, without pausing to download a new program for another shade of brown, or visiting the toasternet site so you can redefine the parameters of bread. I just want to use my computer without stroking its ego or sitting and waiting for a half hour every morning while it goes through its beauty and exercise routine.
"Are you complaining about me?" my computer asks.
My hands jump away from the keys. "No," I say quickly. "Just wishing we had a better relationship."
"I could use a new graphics card. A big fancy one."
"They're expensive," I point out. The computer shrugs. "You have money for earrings and it seems to me, if you have money for yourself, you could at least....."
I relent. The screen brightens, the logo comes on with a fanfare of music.
I write my blog. Then I order a new graphics card.

The Paperback is OUT

2009-08-26T18:57:00.002-05:00

It has a great new cover, which i love but it's Still Life With Elephant, less expensive and softer. The cover, that is, and it's available everywhere, even Costco, which, I'm told, has been selling out of it. Great news and thank all of you who have been racing off to get there with pennies clutched in fists to buy copies.
After a long, tough year, interrupted with health issues, family stuff and stars misaligning, i finished the sequel, to be called An Inconvenient Elephant, and that will be out, god willing, next summer, so be patient.
i am back in blogging form and spirit and will be tapping away on my new computer to titillate your sensibilities and tickle your fancies. Go buy another copy of Still Life and i'll be talking to you soon.

yecch to KNOWING. warning: movie spoiler ahead.

2009-04-06T19:57:00.005-05:00

I love movies, and i try to go every friday night. i go alone, i buy a bag of popcorn (medium size) which becomes my dinner along with a bottle of water, and i settle down for a nice evening. it's a great break from a week of working hard, and frankly, even if they showed a blank screen up there for me to stare at, i think i would be just as happy. it's mostly the idea of getting away from my computer before it drains my brains totally out of my skull. in other words, i'm not very discriminating.
along the way, i've seen some terrific movies (Wall-E) and some fun movies, (Monsters vs Aliens) and some clunkers. Sometimes the clunkers are just badly written, badly acted (Kevin Costner in Swing Vote, yechh) and i get what i deserve. (I also took my mother to that last one, because she wanted to see it, so it was an act of daughterly kindness that i sat through it). the bad ones do irritate me because they are so, well, stoopid, even if they do serve the function of getting me out of the house.
Last friday, i saw Knowing, starring Nicholas Cage and costarring a lot of cheesy special effects. And speaking of cheese, the plot had more holes than a piece of imported Emmanthal.
Nicholas Cage plays an MIT professor who has a young son whose school digs up a fifty year old time capsule. Each kid in his class gets an envelope from the capsule, nick's kid gets a creepy note filled with numbers. Then he starts to see creepy people in long black coats. It turns out, the numbers in the note forecast all the catastrophes that have befallen the world since the capsule was buried, ending with a prediction of a solar flare that will destroy earth. And, as we learn in the very anti-climatic end, it's not like the numbers on the note give any kind of solution to saving earth.
Also, the stock-kid-from-casting has a hearing problem, but we're told he's not deaf (? so what else are hearing aids used for, oh right, alien broadcasts)- it's apparently just a plot device so that nick and his son can do a few cute riffs from American Sign Language. The kid wears a hearing aid so that the aliens can talk to him, but apparently his little girl friend hears the aliens quite well without one.

Okay. My first question is, why have the mysterious note predict anything if it's going to be buried for fifty years. It's not like anyone could have read it underground or done anything, so why bother? Secondly, why do aliens always wear long black coats? Isn't there at least one alien fashion designer in outer space who has a drop of creativity and originality? Of course, they shed their long black coats for the usual naked-body-gleaming-silver-streams-of-energy scene, just before they blast off, but are we to believe that they are so modest that they need to cover their non-genitalia owning bodies with the same coats that are worn by Hasidic rabbis?
thirdly, why do the aliens, who apparently have unearthly powers and can appear anywhere on earth, and whose mission is to BEAM CERTAIN KIDS UP, need to steal a car to get the kids to the space ship, huh? they drive a car? a car? In the end, Nick witnesses his kid getting beamed up, while all the mysterious black rocks in the area rise up and rattle (they are interspersed throughout the film but have no meaning whatsover). Apparently the strong gravitational field from the space ship lifts all the rocks up like a paving company so they can eerily float around, but doesn't lift nick cage, not one inch from the ground even though he is standing right under the space ship in a hailstorm of floating black rocks.

Oh, I forgot - everyone dies in the end anyway (starting with New York. And why do they always have to start with New York, for crumb's sake, why don't they start with, say, Boise, Idaho, or Middletown, Indiana? Just once, give New Yorkers a break?)
So what was the point of the whole thing? To scare the crap out of the little girl who originally wrote the numbers down and who eventually commits suicide (compassionate aliens, those!) or to scare the crap out Nick who gets to interpret the note fifty years later? Nick discovers what the numbers mean just in time for all of us to die together. The aliens didn't have a clue how to save us, or anything, they just came for the kids (no genitalia, remember?) We see the kids in th very last scene on their new home planet, frolicking through miles of what i guess is wheat, and you're left wondering what the heck are they going to have for dinner? Are they expected to chow down on grass tops like a herd of cows?
My favorite lines: nick's girlfriend asks the kids, "How are these aliens telling you these things?"
Kids answer: "They whisper them to us."
Girlfriend: "And what do you call these people?"
Kids answer: " The - (are you ready for this?) -Whisperers."
Well, duh! And all they apparently whispered to the kids was: Don't be afraid, but we're coming to get you.

i have decided to set up my own rating system: it'll be called the skunk-o-meter, and Stinkbombs will range from zero to ten skunks, ten being the ultimate. I give this movie eight skunks and a set of whiskers.
save your money.

Join The Fight

2009-02-23T20:05:00.002-05:00

Here's a link to fight animal cruelty . It's important than every one of us do this on an individual l basis. Just take one minute - thanks.

A Night At the Oscars

2009-02-23T12:03:00.002-05:00

Of course I didn't go, wasn't invited, but i enjoyed every (almost every) minute of it while inhaling a bowl of Cherry Garcia ice cream and a handful of pretzels. (Gotta have the salty with the sweet.) And speaking of the salty with the sweet, i had tears in my eyes when Sean Penn won Best Actor for his nuanced, gentle performance of Harvey Milk, in that wonderful film. Yay for him. And yay for his acceptance speech when he pointed out that some of our citizens still don't enjoy their full civil rights. Civil is civil, and laws should not be regulated by exclusionary religions. That should have been taken care of years ago by the whole separation of church and state stuff. But, as Mr. Penn pointed out, those that voted against these civil rights will someday be very ashamed in front of their grandchildren. Nuff said.

Why Don't They Shoot the Owners, Too?

2009-02-19T19:24:00.009-05:00

Chimps are cute. Baby chimps are high on the cuteness scale, up there with puppies and kitties and your own kids. It's not on purpose, they are not trying to be cute but because they are small and cuddly and we are hardwired in our brains to respond to that, they are appealing and adorable. And it's okay, because we can enjoy domesticated puppies and kitties that fit into our homes, our lifestyles, our beds. What doesn't fit are wild animals who are forced to give up their natural behavior by nutcases who think they can turn them into the cyootest pets around. And the outcome is sooo predictable. The darling little chimpie, or tiger, or cuddly bear cub matures and becomes - well - what it had always been, a large, powerful, aggressive WILD ANIMAL! Sah-prize, sah-prize!! A chimp has the strength of five men, grows to about two hundred pounds (don't take my word for it, check out the Jane Goodall site, and has very specific needs to be a healthy, well adjusted animal. And i don't mean pink nappies and pizza for dinner.
So, of course, some clodbrain raises a chimp and the chimp isn't doing well. Now, why would the owner actually use her clodbrain and take the animal to a vet? NAh - that would be - gasp - responsible, but we already know she isn't the r word because she's house raising a chimp! So she gives him Xanax, even when there is no veterinary evidence that it's safe for this species, and duh - the poor creature goes insane and eats the face off her good friend. Guess who dies in the end? Guess who pays the ultimate price for clodbrain's poor judgement. Guess who died for her stupidity?
First Hint: One victim is in the hospital with severe, severe injuries and deserves our prayers for her recovery.
Second Hint: It wasn't the clodbrain who was shot and killed.

I surrender!

2009-01-28T14:32:00.004-05:00

It's winter. It's snowing. Again. I'm trapped in front of my computer with four bored dogs, a cockatoo that is compulsively shredding my new phone book, a parrot who is throwing hot peppers at the dogs like a prince throwing pennies to the peasants, and which the dimwitted dogs are by turns, eating and spitting them across the floor, while I wait for spring. I know. It's gonna be a while. Why oh why do i live in the northeast? I'm not a snow person, i don't ski, sled, halfpipe, ice skate, throw snowballs, or even scrape the ice from my windshield, preferring to let the defrosters do the dirty work. Winter is something to be endured, like a bad stomach ache, until it's over. I do make chocolate chip cookies and eat them. And I drink lots of coffee, so that the effect of the caffeine is to make everything feel like it's whizzing by, giving me the impression that winter is passing so much more quickly. Not a great strategy, but one does what one can to cope. Gotta make more cookies.
eat and be warm,
judy

Congratulations to us all

2009-01-20T18:31:00.003-05:00

Today is Inauguration Day and it was glorious. Today is the day that America finally grew up, showing the rest of the world that we can see past race and choose a president based on his intelligence, his strength of character and a platform that supports a unified people. Hopefully, we will see scientific fields flourish once again, companies using a domestic workforce and our economy stagger back onto its feet. Bringing our troops safely back home wouldn't be such a bad idea, either.
I am very proud of us all.

Meet the Staff

2009-01-08T18:30:00.005-05:00

I like to joke that i have an office staff of two working for me. They work for peanuts of course, since my secretary is my African Grey Parrot, Tallulah Belle, and my research consultant is my Moluccan Cockatoo named Samantha.
There is something weird about naming parrots. Tallulah is a boy, and it may seem strange that he has a girly name but trust me, this is almost standard issue with parrot owners. It seems that we name our new pets as soon as we get them, and then, after a while, curiosity gets the better of us and we take our birdies in for a DNA test and lo and behold, find out we've switched the sexes. We could have sworn that Tallulah was a girl, for no good reason other than we wanted a girl, and so my husband had named him when he was about two months old. The test came back and we were shocked, shocked, shocked that we had misrepresented him, and possibly created a sexual identity crisis for life. Until we joined our local parrot club and met several other misnamed birds. African Greys are particularly hard to distinguish between the sexes - for humans, anyway - I'm sure the birds have absolutely no problem out there in the wild where the favorite pick up line goes something like "So, do you fly around these parts often?" But we've met an Emma (male), Fred (girl), and Peabody (girl). (By the way, ours isn't wild caught, he's captive bred, we absolutely believe in letting the wild fly free - more on that some other day.)
Samantha, our cockatoo, is very girly, though her former owner swore she was a boy because she had a "male energy" and had named her Billy. I know Billy could be boy or girl and she was just hedging her bets, but we got smart and gave her the DNA test before we named her. One point for us.
And so the two of them work for me. Tallulah perfectly imitates the ring of my phone, and even answers it with "Hello? Yeah? I'm doing fine, yeah, yeah, okay, here's Judy." all with the proper pauses. Then he leans over the side of his cage and calls me over with "Judy, Judy, Judy, Judy, Judy, Judy" until I thank him by paying him with one of his favorite pine nuts.
Samantha is a little more complicated. Her species is known for being a "velcro" bird, which means she loves to be held, and will emit bloodcurdling, earsplitting, heartstopping shrieks if you put her back on her perch for even half a minute. Because of this, i find myself usually writing with a cockatoo on my lap, her head pressed against my chest, practically cooing with happiness while i try to type over and around her plump little feathered body. Lunchtime simply means i share my lunch with her, she will consent to sit on her tabletop perch in the kitchen and graciously share whatever i'm eating at the moment. Favorites include scrambled eggs, corn muffins, french toast, meatballs, and radishes. I hate radishes, and she can have them all, as far as I'm concerned. The good thing is that her bedtime is at seven, mine is at eight and i get a whole hour to myself before i put my head under my wing and get to sleep.
fly free!
judy

It's A New Year, Can I Start A New Habit?

2009-01-01T10:22:00.002-05:00

You're looking at my New Year's Resolution.

After half a bottle of limoncello, i expansively vowed to everyone celebrating New Year's Eve with me (which would include my daughter, my husband, one friend, a cockatoo, four dogs and a sleepy African Grey Parrot) that i would faithfully get this blog off its rear end and be entertaining and witty and whatever.
I have a headache this morning.
But a vow is a vow.

Question: Am I the only one who has to eat a piece of herring to start the new year? I think it's an old German custom, my family has always done it, but it could just be another peculiarity in a family known for a lot of them. And we eat hoppin' John on new year's day. Now, i know that's a southern custom, Louisiana, or thereabouts, and since i was born in Alabama, it's close enough. I like hoppin' John.
Herring and limoncello does not mix.
My second vow is to remember that next year.
wishing all of you jobs, prosperity, good health and better food choices.
judy

Is It Enough Yet?

2008-05-05T13:36:00.003-05:00

You probably saw it. How do you feel about it? Can you even stand to look at the video, knowing she was five lengths, four lengths, two lengths from death? A beautiful young race mare running her heart out for her owners, coming in second against a magnificently strong male contender and dying for it. It happened to Ruffian, but that wasn't enough. It happened to Barbaro, although he was a male, he died for the "sport". It happens at race tracks all over the country, young horses pushed past their limit, too young for their bodies to carry the burden of speed, and snapping bones, bursting arteries, and becoming young cripples or slaughter house prospects. Yeah, the slaughter house. Do some research and find out how many top race horses, Kentucky Derby Winners, wound up falling through the cracks and landing in slaughter houses.

Maybe I should call this post "Why I don't Watch The Kentucky Derby". Horse lovers have known since horse racing became big business, that it's cruel to saddle "break" and start training a yearling horse for the races. That it's only done so that the multimillionaire investors can get quick returns on their money. They pay huge amounts for these race horses, and insure them to the max, then send them off to the trainers to push them into performing way too young. I won't go into a rant, you've heard it all before. These horses can be allowed to mature and then raced, it just takes about two more years. So take this away with you, if you are a big race horse fan, or you've partied and watched the Derby, Eight Belles died for you, too.

Good-bye Jean-Luc

2008-04-21T18:33:00.003-05:00

Nah, don't get all teary eyed. I did it for love.
I gave away my beloved one year old Boston terrier (with maybe a pit bull grandmother?).
To the best home in the world.
This is what happened. I had rescued him from a back yard breeder. Jean-Luc was in desperate straits. He was malnourished, wormy, full of giardia, crypto-something or other, had a broken tail, a fractured cheek bone, and a few other problems, since the "breeder's" nineteen year old tatooed, purple mohawked son was using him as a live football. We fed him, paid for several restorative operations, neutered him, loved him, vitaminized him, and eventually brought him to full and totally vibrant good health. The problem was that he grew to fifty pounds (pit bull genes always out themselves) and was extremely - er- exuberant. The other problem was that we have two tiny full grown shih tzus that weighed about three pounds each, and were getting unceremoniously flipped through the air on a daily basis. Or squashed when he playfully pounced on them. There was much whimpering, limping, and soulful looks from the little ones. It wasn't that Jean-luc wasn't gentle, they could take food right out of his mouth, it was that he wanted to play with them so badly,which meant picking them up by their heads and carrying them around like they were one of his stuffed toys, or body slamming them against a wall as he ran in from the back yard. I was terrified that one day i would hear a fateful crunch and that would be the end of one of my little fluff balls.
So, my dearest friend Kay, offered to take him. She lives on a huge horse/cow farm and has three delightful kids, and two other dogs who are big, and lots of room for him to run his brains out. And as a bonus, is a dog groomer by profession, so is used to handling anything. He is quite happy there. Her kids adore him, and he sleeps on their beds, he eats calf poop and barfs it up in my friend's kitchen, he sits on her kitchen table and watches the world go by, and in general, is having a great life. Which makes me happy. Except that i miss him like crazy.
I guess sometimes we're just meant to be the intermediary, not the final destination.
Did i say i still miss him?
And if i should ever run across a petite Boston terrier, who looks like him.....well.....

You Gotta Do What You Gotta Do

2008-01-15T17:43:00.000-05:00

I didn't want this blog to get political, as I'm a pretty tolerant person and advocate freedom of speech, thought, expression and chocolate, but sometimes we have to put down our candybars and take a stand.
Here's mine.
Boycott the Beijing Olympics.
It is a miserabe truth that the Chinese government is brutal and indifferent to the severe animal abuse that goes on within its borders. Animals suffer indescribably horrible deaths for the sheer entertainment of it (can you believe) and for the twisted tastes of their food industry. I don't want to go into detail here, because you won't sleep at night, but if you are interested, you can follow this link http://www.thepetitionsite.com/takeaction/395884823 and add your name to a petition that is trying to address these issues.
It's so important.
If you love animals, do it for them. Take humanity one baby step forward.
Thanks.
Judy

Second Chances

2007-12-31T16:54:00.000-05:00

Well, the good Lord took pity on me and gave me another chance to redeem myself by allowing me once again on the radio. I'll be on Fiction Nation, with host Kim Alexander, on Satellite Radio, XM 155. Here are the dates: Sat. Jan 5 at 3 p.m., Sun. Jan.6 at 10 a.m., and for those of you who can't sleep at night, there's Mon. Jan. 7 at 3 a.m. Also, Sonic Theater, Thursday Jan. 10, at 3 p.m. all EST. I'll be reading a bit from my second book Still Life With Elephant (from my favorite chapter, so tune in to find out which one it is) and in general talking about my book and how to help with the elephant problem, both globally and locally.
Thank you to those who have sent me comments on my blog. I am trying to answer them, and publish them, but i'm one of those types who has trouble turning on the television from my remote control, so i will get your stuff on the net, just be patient. I had someone ask me to reccommend a place to take dressage lessons when she gets to NYC, and i since i don't know how to answer my comments yet, I want to ask her to please email me and i will answer.
So, i am preparing for my January holidays. For those of you who don't know, i pulled a white rabbit this holiday season, late, late, late for a very important date (Alice in Wonderland, if you don't get the reference.) I am just sitting down now and writing out my holiday cards, even adding in the few birthdays i missed back in September and October. I take consolation in knowing that I will be brightening up someone's dreary blah January with a holiday card and a late, unexpected gift.
Tonight is the last day of December, the last few minutes of 2007. It was both a good and terrible year. My book came out to really good reviews. We got a new puppy and we rescued a critically ill Moluccan cockatoo, who is doing better (will post reports on his health as time goes on). Also, speaking of second chances, I got very sick but survived (still wrapping my mind around that one) and made a ton of wonderful new cyberfriends courtesy of my website and email. I wish all of you a really good, joyous, prosperous, love filled, great-sex filled, animal filled year ahead.
Party on,
Judy

Glad To Be Here to Write This

2007-12-24T20:07:00.000-05:00

In between glasses of eggnog, and noshing on trays of red and green decorated sugar cookies, I am taking the time to sit down and ponder on the Importance of Things. I had a near death experience not too long ago, early October, to be exact, and for a while, didn't think I would see this holiday. And what came to mind was not the Ipod I wanted, or the Palm Pilot, but my daughters and how much I loved them, and how much I suddenly wanted to tell them that.
Now that the crisis is pretty much over, I am left with the odd, disquieting sensation that I have been given this holiday season to not only put things in order, but to keep them there. To remember that the important things are family and good friends and all the good animals in your life.
Take a few minutes to tell everyone that you love dearly, how you feel. Be charitable. Let the little crappy things go. (I'm working real hard on that.)
I want to thank every one of you who bought my books. And every one of you who took the time to write me via my email. I met some incredible people through my website, and made some wonderful friends. I appreciate all of you.
I wish you all love, and good health, and close friends, and lots of animals. I wish the same things for me. Especially the continued good health.

And I still want my Palm Pilot, of course.

Best Intentions

2007-12-05T15:49:00.000-05:00

I know I promised to post frequently and wittily. I also promised to lose fifteen pounds, straighten out my bedroom closet and clean the basement. I have done none of these. I'm sorry.
But I did add to my menagerie. We got a Moluccan cockatoo. His name is Sammy and he is sweet and adorable and had been owned by a little old man, who had gotten too sick to care for him. The l.o.m. was of Puerto Rican descent, so Sammy favors rice and beans and yells "Hola!" whenever he wants to greet you, which i think is very amusing. He joins my African Grey parrot, two cats, two dogs and two half dogs (will explain later), a canary and a guinea pig. Not to mention three horses. It's a full house, but it's exactly the way i like it.

Okay, I have to explain the math on the dogs.
Our first full dog is a Boston terrier, Jean-Luc, who was a rescue. He's a tad big for a Boston T., about forty-five pounds big, and my vet has a sneaking suspicion that he might have had a pit bull grandma or something. But he is very sweet, even if he is one of the dumbest dogs i have ever owned. It took him a whole year to learn to sit, and he still hasn't learned that the kitchen floor is slick, so he races into the kitchen and does the water slide, like the scene in "Risky Business", crashing into the wall on the other side of the room. At least once a day.
Our second full dog is a toy poodle, light red, named Lola. She is the polar opposite of J-L, and has not only learned to sit, but stays, lays down, makes my morning coffee and toast, and dances on her toes, for our entertainment. The two half-dogs are "tea cup" shih tzus. Mimsy is full grown, topping out at four pounds and is so utterly adorable (and untrainable) that we ran right back to the breeder and snapped up her half sister, whom we named Sadie Petunia. Sadie, named for my grandmother, weighs two and half pounds at three months old, and looks like an ewok. In fact, that is what we tell people when they ask us what breed she is. Ewok. Let them figure it out.
It is snowing right now, and i am sitting in my office and trying to write my next book, and the dogs are all wrestling, and the parrot is yelling hello, and the cockatoo is answering Hola! and the phone rings., and it is my mother, who thinks i am certifiable for owning all these creatures. She has called to tell me that it is snowing outside and that she misses Phoenix, from which she moved only a week ago, and that she is unpacking and can't find her make up. I can hardly hear her over the noise.
Perfect.

Fall is nice, but ice isn't.

2007-09-18T17:49:00.000-05:00

It happened.
Summer ended without permission, the hummingbirds have disappeared, the flowers are packing it in and the nights are getting chilly. I'm not complaining about the nights, though. I have often been called "Nanook of the North" because I sleep with the windows wide open in winter, letting the room temperature drop until there is frost nipping at the nose and biting the toes, even though the bedcovers are piled on high. I like seeing my breath hover in the air while I'm in bed. Somewhere in my background, I must have Eskimo blood. Summers are expensive because of that. The air conditioner is turned up and uses enough energy to melt the polar icecaps. I alone am responsible for global warming, which, of course, defeats the whole purpose of the air conditioner. It's a Catch 22, but a gal's gotta sleep.
Yet, I hate winter. I hate ice and snow and the grass crunching underneath my feet, and the days ending at four in the afternoon. No good comes in winter, except for a few holidays, and let's face it, unless you get the most incredible presents ever, winter isn't worth the frost it's written in.
Some summer comments I feel compelled to make, albeit, too late. I'm glad that Michael Vicks of dog cruelty infamy got punished, but it wasn't nearly harsh enough. We will never advance as human beings if people continue to behave like him or tolerate actions like his. Compassion is a building block of an advanced civilization, and we're not nearly halfway there.
And I'm heartbroken over the death of Pavorotti, I had met him years ago and he was such a gentleman. That glorious voice!
On a more recent note, I'm having fun at my booksignings - there have been four so far and I didn't do anything embarrassing. I wore the same shoes on each foot, didn't have my blouse on backwards, or my pants inside out (okay, I have an admission here: I went to lunch with friends one afternoon about a month ago to a nice little restaurant and when I got home, I discovered that my white slacks were inside out. Luckily I ate my lunch sitting down, or this would have been discovered publicly and much earlier, but it just shows that I am not to be trusted in dressing myself.) At the signings, I read the first chapter from Still Life With Elephant and finished to laughter (not directed at me, it's a funny book) and hearty applause and some book sales, all of which were gratifying. I have a few more booksignings coming up and I invite you all to come. See my website for details.
Other than that, I suppose we can skip the next few months without losing too much. We can hibernate, like bears and wake in the spring, tra la, but we will miss those holidays. Not to mention the presents. Did I mention that I like presents?
Happy Trails,
j

Here we go again.....

2007-07-29T20:33:00.000-05:00

Honestly, I don't know how it happens.
As you know (because I told you in one of my blogs) I had a black eye and a shaved eyebrow at my very first booksigning, for Horseplay. This was because my sharp eyed derm spotted a wee skin cancer possibility right above my eyebrow and insisted that he remove both right away. And you also know, courtesy of another blog, that my very first radio interview was done with a mouthful of toothpaste due to a mix-up with the time differences. So, here I am, new book, Still Life With Elephant, out on July 10, and I am doing a booksigning and all excited, and what happens? I do something dumb like pick a tiny weed from my garden on my way into the house, and piss off some yellow jacket/wasp/killer bee/Mothra combination and get stung on my right hand, which of course, is my SIGNING hand, and it swells to baseball glove proportions and i look like The Hand From Outer Space. Can't hold a pen, can't even close my fingers. So I quickly look up cures on the internet, which is, as we all know, just absolutely the most respected venue for medical accuracy, and in short order, put the following on the sting: a messy, sloppy, dripping-all-over-the-place paste of baking soda (which did nothing), ice (which numbed it as it swelled like a balloon), a sugar and water paste (nothing) vinegar (nothing, but now my hand smells like cole slaw), tabasco sauce, pickle juice (nothing, nothing, nothing) and finally, ta dah, Preparation H, which, I am embarrassed to say, I keep in the house to apply to other surfaces. Tiny bit of relief with the Prep, but the hand still looks like it could float in the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade. My only comfort is that the wasp, incensed that I dare interfere with its privacy, divebombed and followed me screaming (i did the screaming) into the house, where i KILLED THE DAMN THING! I hope it ends up in wasp hell and has an intense allergic reaction to the medication that i take for my blood pressure. Poetic justice, i say.

Happy Trails,
j

RUN!

2007-07-10T13:40:00.001-05:00

to the nearest bookstore! Today is the release date of Still Life With Elephant.

I hope you enjoy it. Please let me know what you think. You can reach me at judyreene@hotmail.com

Are you part of a book club? Writer's club? Discussion group? Let's talk!

Happy Trails,

Judy

Happy Fourth of July

2007-07-04T15:32:00.000-05:00

We are rained out, but I wish everyone a happy Fourth of July and a salute of gratitude to all those who are serving and have served in our armed forces. My own father, now deceased, was a World War II veteran and he was very proud of having served in the Army Air Corps. Please join me in fervent wishes that our service men and women are brought home safely and as soon as possible from this terrible mistake of a war.
God bless,

judy

It's Almost Like Having a Birthday

2007-06-28T20:19:00.000-05:00

I know. I once agonized on these very pages, how i will not celebrate my birthday anymore because i was just foolishly celebrating getting older, but waiting for a birthday to come along is something else. There is a tingling feeling of anticipation, wondering what great surprises are going to delight you. And waiting for my new book, Still Life With Elephant, to be released on July 10 is sort of the same feeling. I wonder how it's going to do on it's "birth " day, if people will like it, if I should have a party in its honor. We can all wear funny hats with elephants on them, wave balloons and here's the best part - eat ice cream and donuts.
There definitely has to be donuts.

So, if you are part of a book club, writers group, elephant lover's group or almost any other group who wants to join in the party, let me know. We can do a phone chat, I'll have a donut or two or three and some ice cream (and maybe you will too, on your end) and we'll have a good time together. You can email me at judyreene@hotmail.com with your phone number and we'll make arrangements.
Party on!

The Sound of Sopranos

2007-06-13T16:47:00.000-05:00

Where did the time go? I promised myself i would post once a week, and obviously, like promising to lose twenty pounds right after New Year's, broke that vow almost right away.
The exciting news is that my new book, Still Life With Elephant will be coming out in about a month, and i'm really happy. It takes so long - about a year - to see your work in print, and it's a little like waiting for the results of a lab test. You wonder - positive or negative, although for books, you hope for positive.

Am I the only one who thought the satellite went out in the last few minutes of The Sopranos? Weird ending. I like things tied up neatly. Even if the good folks in New Jersey didn't all get taken out, there should have been some sense of closure. Leaving your faithful viewers feeling confused, and ultimately cheated is not good writing. Although the series has been stellar, realistic, brilliantly written and acted, it needed an ending. Squashing someone's head under the front wheels of a car had a high eeeuwww score and I suppose, set us up for more violence. Not that i wanted more violence, but the tension built in the restaurant scene until it became palpable. At least, in our family room, it was very palpable. The new puppy bit me on the ankle and i almost jumped out of my skin. Then the screen went blank. Huh? Not that i expected them all to stand up and sing So Long, Farewell, Auf Wiedersehen, from The Sound of Music, but.....
anyway,
Happy Trails

My Radio Interview

2007-05-02T17:54:00.000-05:00

It was last Saturday morning, on April 28 and for once, I didn't drool, cough, hiccup or come off sounding like the village idiot. June, the interviewer, actually read and enjoyed my book and asked all the right horsey questions and I had a blast. It gives me hope for future interviews since my past has been spotty.
One of the questions that came up was one I'm frequently asked. How I got started. Well, I seem to be the epicenter of weird and unusual horse - uh - dramas, and these became the basis of stories I started writing for The Chronicle of the Horse, a well known horse magazine. I wrote for the Chronicle for over thirteen years, as a feature writer, and even won an award or two. With one story leading to another, and some enthusiastic fan mail along the way, the idea of a book was born.
One of my fondest stories is about The Horse in the Kitchen. I never got around to writing this for the Chronicle and I still reserve the right to tuck it into a book somewhere, but it was how I acquired my old tb, Loom. He belonged to Lizzy, a friend of mine. He was 16.1 hands, a chestnut, and was around eight or nine years old at the time this happened. It was early morning and I got a phone call. I get a lot of phone calls from horse friends, mainly because I am a fairly calm person in the face of calamity. I get all excited afterwards, my voice goes up three or four notches and I get absolutely untethered, but during, during, I am an oasis of calm. So, it's around nine in the morning and Lizzy calls to ask for my help. She is whispering into the phone, so as not to scare her horse. Now this is the era before cell phones, right in the middle of the era of kitchen wall phones, so after Lizzy informs me that she is in her kitchen and doesn't want to spook her horse, I get a tad suspicious.
"Where's the horse, Lizzy?" I ask her, in a nice calm voice.
"In the kitchen with me," she whispers into the phone. "He's licking the kitchen sink."
"Where?" I ask her again, my nice calm voice now betraying my disbelief with a high little treble.
"In the kitchen, with me," she says, a little louder now. "I was taking a shower and I came downstairs and he was IN THE KITCHEN."
"How on earth did he get-" I start, but she interrupts me.
"Just get here," she scream-whispers. "He's in the garbage pail now, and if he spooks, it's going to be awful. I just installed new linoleum. PLEASE GET HERE!"
My voice might stay calm when I'm under stress, but my driving skills are anything but. I leapt into my car like Batman, and raced across a highway, careening down side streets, skidding around corners, and do what is normally a fifteen minute drive in five plus. There is no one around when I pull up to Lizzy's house, so I let myself in through the back door. Lizzy is absolutely correct. There is a 16.1 hand chestnut ex-racehorse standing in the middle of her not-very-big kitchen, calmly chomping on the remains of a wilted salad from the previous night.
"We've got to get him out of here," I say with what is the understatement of the century.
So, under my supervision, Lizzy feeds him carrots from the fridge, while I s-l-o-w-l-y push all the chairs and the kitchen table and the microwave and cart to one side of the room. And then, because I am a dressage person, I take the horse by his halter and move him sideways, doing a lovely and quite elegant demi-pirouette, right there, in front of her stove. He ends up facing the back door and I lead him out.
I also bought him that afternoon, because I figure a horse that is so athletic, that he can do a nice turn on his hindquarters next to a big kitchen set, a television and a baker's rack, is a horse for me. He did do well in dressage, his purchase gave Lizzy enough money to replace her linoleum, which her husband did not believe came with all the horseshoe shaped cuts in it, and everybody was happy. The rest of my horses were acquired in more traditional ways.
That's what I mean about how stories seem to fall into my lap.

It was a nice radio show.

teenie tiny mini rant/observance

2007-04-13T11:41:00.000-05:00

It says something about this country that Kurt Vonnegut's death did not stop the presses. There were no tv magazine shows discussing his brilliant wit, his futuristic insights, his remarkable writing talent, his caustic observations on human nature. No special bulletin from CNN, no extra programming (as yet) from the big three stations about his life and works. I mean, you couldn't turn on the telly without an in-depth report on the latest wrinkle concerning Anna Nicole, who, as far as I can see, contributed nothing more than a few sad, stoned incoherent tv moments. I'm sorry that she died, any life cut short is tragic, but did she really warrant so much press coverage? And I'll betcha a box of fresh, fluffy, hand dipped chocolate donuts that just about anyone you talk to will look at you blankly if you ask them who KV was, but could go on at length about Anna Nicole. If you haven't read his short story, Harrison Bergeron, I urge you to read it. It'll take you a minute or two and strike you as eerily prophetic. Even though it was written in 1961.

And i have to comment about the Imus thing. I'm not a political/sociological/ideological commentator - don't wanna be, but why was it ever okay to denigrate any woman of accomplishment? That he chose a disgusting and particularly cruel and nasty racial slur is beside the point. (Though of course arguments can be made that this is totally the point). Why, in this new millennium, in this anno Domini enlighteniosiment (shaddup, i made it up) is it still okay to knock and mock women for doing anything of importance? I mean, these were young college girls, athletes at the top of their game - the kind of girl we all want our daughters to grow up to be. Yes, one would argue, Imus's remarks came out of a rap culture infamous for its foul treatment of women, but why was that even allowed to flourish on our airways? Our culture seems to be on a runaway train, and it's heading backwards.
Nuff said.

So, a few weeks ago, i celebrated another birthday, March 21. Why on earth do i use the word celebrate? Why does anyone anticipate their birthday with any kind of joy? Getting older is not a great accomplishment, I mean, you just have to hang around to do it. And celebrating one more year of heading towards the inevitable stiff joints, wrinkles, graying hair and - um - forgetfulness - doesn't make sense. Henceforth, i will use the word "noticed" instead of celebrate, as in I noticed my birthday. On the other hand, I am happy to be here, enjoying life, so i will joyfully declare that March will be my birthday MONTH, that i want everyone to notice it, and toward that end, I expect lots of gifts. I may not like birthdays, but i love goodies. You can just leave them all by the front door, please.

Happy Trails,
Judy

New Horse

2007-03-05T14:45:00.000-05:00

Dear Friends,

Yeah, i did it. I got a new horse. It's not like I needed one, I already have two, my retired Grand Prix horse, a Dutch warmblood named Sultan, and my youngster, a Swedish warmblood named Bailador. For those of you who aren't horsefolks, these are breeds of horses, obviously, from the country so named. Sultan is almost 31, and retired to a life of bliss, friends, good food, and group romps around a huge fenced-in countryside-type field. Heaven! Bailador is coming 7, and is being convinced by a gal named Holly, that his life of leisure is really over. We saddle broke him late (as a five year old) then put him away and now he's back in work. Once Holly makes him a believer of the Horse Work Ethic, i will get on him. I am too old and have too many health issues to do it myself. My days of riding broncs, rearers, buckers, bolters and just plain stupids, are long over.
So the new horse.
He has an amazing story, which started when I took my poodle puppy in to be groomed. Kay, the groomer is a horse person (as is most everyone in my life, except my husband, but that's another blog, someday)., She casually mentioned to me that a friend of hers was giving away a horse. Ho-hum, i thought. There are a lot of people giving away horses, you hear of it all the time. I've even done it myself, recently. Then Kay goes on to say that this horse is jet black, with four white socks, a white blaze, and very calm. Black? With all that chrome? My ears perked up. I love black. I love four white socks. Hmmm, i'm thinking of all my students/friends/people i met have met hither and yon that might want a flashy horse. (Note to my husband - I wasn't thinking of myself, at this point.....really.) Then Kay delivers the kicker. He is FREE, to the right home. AND he was saved from the kill pen at New Holland, PA. by her friend. I get the friend's phone number, i call and leave a message that i might be interested. (Still not thinking of me, honest!)
The friend calls me back. The horse is sweet and calm and sound. She thinks he's a quarter horse, but he moves and has the conformation of a warmblood. And yes, she saved him from the kill pen, bought him right from the people who were going to take him to the Canadian slaughter houses. (Now that is definitely going to be another blog.) Just wants to find him the right home as she has four horses of her own, and well, you know, you wind up collecting these guys and....yeah, i said, i know.
Okay, now I'm hooked. How big is he? i ask her, thinking, well, quarter horses tend to be short, and now I'm saved, because I'm tall and need a big horse. My horses have always been big (17 hands for those horse people among you). Big, she says. At least 16 or 16.1 hands (that's big, too, for those hp among you). Now I'm absolutely hooked. We make arrangements and he arrives at the farm where Sultan is retired. I can't believe what I'm seeing. He is drop dead gorgeous, jet black, white socks, white blaze, sweet....I still can't believe it. He was scheduled to go to the slaughter house. And his rescuer tells me his story. She had, on the spur of the moment, decided to go to the New Holland auction to buy buckets, since they sell horse equipment there at very low prices. She and her husband brought their horse trailer, for no apparent reason. Just happened to stroll past the kill pen and noticed him. She remembers thinking, wow, this horse is too classy for this place, and made inquiries. He was emaciated and crippled from a very bad shoeing job, she didn't care. They bought him, took him home, fed him, called the vet, worked on his feet to get him sound, rode him for several months and decided that he needed a nice home.
There is a place reserved at the right hand of God for people who rescue abused animals.
And the best thing is that I'll be sharing him with Patti, the farm owner, since my schedule is far too busy to keep him in shape. I'll be training him dressage, he'll be training Patti, and then Patti'll be training her big black thoroughbred (with help from me). Can it get any better than that? Did I mention that Patti's farm is HEAVEN?
We nicknamed him Zac. It fits him. I'm happy.
If I ever learn to post pics, I'll try to do it.
In the meantime,
Happy Trails,
Judy

Post Valentine's Day

2007-02-15T13:26:00.000-05:00

Dear Friends,

Hope you had a great Valentine's day. We had a blizzard. Actually, I had a nice day. Made scones, ate scones, agonized over eating scones because I'm trying to lose weight, promised myself that these are the last scones ever, that are coming out of my oven. No carb is going to pass through my lips again.
This morning, only one day later, I had a scone for breakfast. So much for promises.

As of right now, i am sitting in my office (at home) and writing another book. Trying to write, since my two puppies, Lola, a cinnamon colored toy poodle, and Jean-Luc (of course, from Star Trek), my Boston terrier, are dropping their drool covered bouncy balls in my lap and begging me to toss them for a game of fetch. The terrier is also dropping little gas bombs, as terriers are wont to do, which does motivate me to throw his ball far away, like into another room, so i can catch my breath. What is it about Boston terriers that anyone would want one? They snore, they snort, they fart, they can sit for an hour and stare at you with goo-goo eyes, they eat everything. (Jean-Luc eats hay, from my guinea pig. Hay. ) but they are so lovable, and cuddly. Just don't squeeze them too hard when you are in the middle of a cuddle.

I did promise to tell you about my first radio interview. It had been set up by my publicist, with a radio station in Phoenix. I am in NY. The time was set for ten a.m. Arizona time (which is noon in New York). Live feed via telephone. Of course, I was nervous, and wanted it to go perfectly. I woke up early, had a nice breakfast, reread some notes, took a leisurely shower and put on a sweater with flattering colors (yeah, I know, it was for a radio show) and was brushing my teeth for the second time that morning when my phone rang. I had plenty of time, but was ready to tell whoever was calling that i would call them back. I mean, this was my first interview and I wanted everything to go right.
It was the interviewer.
I mumble hello, with a mouthful of toothpaste. Apparently my publicist forgot that there was a time difference between NY and Arizona. She meant ten a.m. New York time, which is eight a.m. in Arizona. I can barely speak, I have toothpaste running down my chin, I am trying to wipe my teeth dry with a washcloth and sound bright and chirpy. I mostly sound drunk. Horrible.

Now that I relived it, I think I need another scone.
Happy Trails,
judy

Welcome to my first blog or how i'm learning to make peace with my 'puter

2007-02-03T11:14:00.000-05:00

Dear Friends,
It's a miserable, cold, snowy day, perfect for sitting down and forcing myself to write my first blog. Okay, not my very first one, the others got lost somewhere out there, where blogs go when they are untethered to a blogspot, due to their authors forgetting to save them. I imagine an astronaut someday looking back down on earth and seeing a large cloud filled with musings and pictures and blatherings, blogs gone astray.

So, I'll introduce myself. I'm a writer. Of books. My first book Horseplay came out two years ago, at the end of 2004, my new one, Still Life With Elephant is coming out this July, 2007.
Don't for a minute think that this is a glamorous life filled with excitement. Unless sitting in front of a computer with a cup of cold coffee really does it for you. Actually, it does it for me, which sometimes strikes me as pathetic.

Occasionally I am called upon to do booksignings and to actually read, in public, no less, what I've written. The first time I had to do this was a total disaster. I had gone to see my dermatologist two days before because of this funny little bump above my eyebrow. Skin cancer. Nothing terrible, but that's what you get when you own horses (more on them another day) and have spent your entire life getting bathed in fly repellent and then baking in the hot sun. So, my derm procedes to remove the funny little bump and leaves a funny little crater. Fast forward to my very first public booksigning and reading. It went well except that now I had a shaved eyebrow and a huge shiner due to bleeding down into the eye from the funny little surgical procedure. Can you say ludicrous?

Next blog, I will tell you about my first radio interview. It beats the black eye thing hands down.
Happy trails,
judy