Hedgehogs, who knew?

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A friend of mine just posted on Facebook that she wants a hedgehog for Christmas. She's probably mostly joking, but of course I then had to google "buy a hedgehog" and find a hedgehog breeder near me so that I could taunt her with pictures of baby hedgehogs.

First of all, I didn't really know they could be pets. I thought they were like squirrels, but no, you can buy a hedgehog.

Some other fun things I learned:

1) You can free feed a hedgehog - meaning, just leave out a bowl of food, but you know your hedgehog (can we just call them H-hogs for short? Thanks) is getting a bit plump when they can't curl into a ball anymore. I think that's an excellent test for anyone.

2) They only do well if the temperature is between 70 and 80 degrees. Just like me. If it dips below 70, they will attempt to hibernate, and they don't do this very well. I don't know if that means they can't quite achieve hibernation and just get really sleepy, or if they achieve it *too* well and don't wake up.

3) Either way, the solution is a heating pad. Either put them on a human one, or buy a hedgehog shaped reptile one and put it in their cage. This is the first pet I've heard of where "heating pad" is part of their special needs.

4) No clumping litter. I'm not even gonna tell you where it gets stuck, but I will tell you this. If I ever get a hedgehog, I'm only getting a girl for this reason alone.

5)Hedgehogs are nocturnal. You can wake them up and play with them during the day, but don't try to change their schedule and make them a daytime pet. Again, we might be related. I've heard of werewolves, could I be a latent were-hedgehog? Every morning it occurs to me that I am not a daytime pet.

Right there in black and white

Or maybe it's green and blue... anyway. I was doing some research for my work in progress and needed to look up some demographic data for a little town in California. While I was perusing this city data site, I noticed weather facts. Here are the facts for this little California town - these are graphs showing the number of sunny days compared with the national average - and the number of cloudy days. The details don't really matter - just take a look and get a feel for the shape of the graphs.


Ok, got it? Great.
It occurred to me to look up *my* city and see just how different it is. I live just outside of Seattle.
Here's my graphs:


Just to be clear - that thick green line all by itself at the bottom? That's our average percentage of sunny days, compared with the US average....wayyyyy above it.
And on the cloudy graph - see that big purple mass that looks like it's going to swallow you up? That's the number of cloudy days and that little wisp of yellow at the top is the number of sunny days.

So enjoy your sun, all of you who don't live with me and the purple monster. ;) He and I have made peace - he tells me to fill up my coffee cup and go ahead, read the next chapter of The Night Circus - after all, it's cold out there!

More on pit bulls...

So yes, my new book has a pit bull in it. The research has come pretty naturally - I'm a pro with petfinder - but I keep finding dogs I want. Like this one.
She knows how to sit, shake, high five, and bark "I Love You!" It's not her fault she's a stray - her owner is in jail and she's got no home. I mean, I'm only human...
A friend of mine who works in a shelter kept posting about pit bulls on Facebook and I was like, yeah, yeah... aren't they kind of scary? Why are you so obsessed with pit bulls.
Then she posted a link to the American Temperament Testing Society's page.
They run thousands of dogs through a challenging temperament test every year. If a dog fails the test, it's because they showed unprovoked aggression, panic without recovery, or strong avoidance. It's a much more difficult test to pass than the Canine Good Citizenship test that so many dogs take to prove that they're reliable. Pit bulls passed at about 86% - so for every hundred dog about 14 didn't pass, and they tested around 700. Golden Retrievers passed at a rate of 84%.

And then *I* became obsessed with pit bulls. Why have they been so maligned? Why do people fear them? Why do we read about so many pit bull attacks. Why not Golden Retriever attacks? Or Schnauzer's that only passed at 66%.

It's been a fun journey. I'm almost done with this book. But it's really only used such a small part of all that I've learned. Fortunately, I have a blog. :)

Back for your enjoyment: Dog of the day

Do you any of you long time readers remember when I had my "Boxer of the Day" feature? I used to work above a pet store, and I walked by that pet store every day on the way to Starbucks. Let's be real, I walked to Starbucks more than once a day. And I had to walk past that pet store to get there and back - so I saw the pups sometimes 4 or 6 times a day. One day, the inevitable happened, I fell in love. I called her Hepburn, even though I never got to take her home. She was a little fawn colored Boxer with a black mask. Since I couldn't have her, I did what any other person dealing with unrequited love would do - I became just a wee bit obsessed. I put up a picture of a new Boxer every day on my blog. I still don't have a Boxer. I had another baby instead and I'm still not in a "let's go get a puppy" time of life. But that's good, because I've moved on from Boxer's had have a new dog... love. Let's not use the word obsession, shall we? And since this ties in to the new book I've almost finished, I'm sharing my obsession love with all of you! This is Auggie. He's available for adoption in Seattle. If you adopt him, tell me - I want to pet him! He's a blue brindle with super soft fur and smile lines.

He's also a pit bull. More on that later... I promise!

Steampunk week and other things

It's steampunk week at Tor!

They have a book sweepstakes going on right now and all kinds of posts on Steampunk. I'm reminded when I see things like this that I write and enjoy a particular facet of steampunk - I like mine Victorian and mechanical and pretty clean. That's part of why I'm rewriting the current book to be middle grade - it just fits my style better. Having a middle grader at home for market testing helps, too. :) I also wanted to pass on a writing book recommendation: Katherine Patterson's The Invisible Child: On Reading and Writing Books for Children. Despite carefully avoiding The Bridge to Terebithia as a child (I thought it would be too sad - but I really should have taken the chance since it's a beautiful book. I think my past self could have handled it.) This is a collection of talks she's given at various conferences. The most meaningful to me is on a child's sense of wonder and how important books are to that and how that element is so crucial to good writing for children. She uses language extremely well, and they're both delightful to read and helpful. Even when you're reading them on a treadmill like I've been doing. If they can take my mind off the fact that I'm exercising, which is not one of my favorite activities, they're pretty good. :)

The problem with not posting...

for a bit is then you think you need a big "back to the blog" post and then it's not good enough and then you wait longer to come up with a better post, creating a bigger time lapse, so then you need an even BETTER post... you see the problem.

So let's just all pretend there *wasn't* a big long break and this doesn't have to be a stellar post? Thank you.

Alright then...new things:

1) On writing - the steampunk book is being revised right now. I decided it wanted to be a book for middle graders, and it's taken some time to rework it. It's kind of like knitting a pair of gloves with yarn that wants to be a stuffed mouse. It's just hard on you, the yarn, and the gloves. Better to start over. I'm almost done with the revisions, but just as I was finishing up...

2) I had a new idea that I couldn't let go of. So I've been writing furiously all summer and now... is it fall? Sheesh. So, that's where some of my blogging time went. The new book is about something near and dear to my heart and you can bet they'll be posts about it coming up. Here's a hint, "woof".

3) The blog is remaining steampunky because I have more steampunky goodness coming your way and that's another project that's been taking up my time. No, I didn't mod my laptop into a wonder of brass and wood. This is something more easily shareable. I'll link to it when it's all ready to go!

Ok, so thanks for pretending with me that the whole long summer hasn't gone by without talking. We're here now, that's what's important. Right? Thanks!

The plague - at least my plague

I have the flu. It might be the plague, but we'll just call it the flu. By plague I mean evil virus that takes over your lungs and entire upper-respiratory system and bends it to its will. Not the other kind of plague.

This is of course the week that anyone who might remotely want to help me with this is out of town including my husband. OK, so it's only a couple of days that overlap while they're all gone. But it feels more dramatic to say a week.

Here are the things that go on when you're a mom and the plague comes to town:

1) Your 3 year old hears you cough and says "Mommy, I want to save you!" Then gives you a hug.

2) But, after coming out of the bathroom you find that the same delightful three year old has been eating brown sugar out of the pantry with a spoon... and trailing it across the kitchen floor.

3) Not to be outdone, the Boop, the five year old, was clearly "cooking" in the kitchen while I was on the sofa. I mean, I could see into the kitchen and she looked fine, but I couldn't see past her shoulders. I thought she was having a nice snack at the table (banana and crackers). What I found when I dragged myself over there was that she'd sliced the banana in 10 fifty cent sized pieces, left the peel all over the table, and combined brown sugar with something liquid in two bowls and was preparing to add raisins to it when I intercepted her. I need to buy more brown sugar. And mop the floor.

4) As a side note, cough syrup should work, not just taste bad.

5) Your 5 year old declares that her Barbies all have fevers and upon inspection you find them laid out in the bathroom on a towel with "cold compresses" (her words) of wet toilet paper all over them. They looked like soggy, Barbie mummies. And if you think the wet toilet paper stayed in the bathroom and didn't require a much more extensive clean up, you've forgotten already that I have a three year old.

6) You move from the sofa to the kitchen and your five year old shouts, "You're moving! Are you healed? Are you all better! Look, you stood up!"

7) Also, I had a weird desire to do all the laundry in the house. I think this comes from a case of cabin fever. I'm very susceptible to cabin fever and all the hallucinations that come with it. Now I'm faced with a pile of clean laundry that I think might win in a battle. It looks like a 50's horror slime monster, only clean clothes, not slime.

Signing off now. The monster, the zombie, and the red bird (all names given and enforced by the three year old for himself, Boop, and his big sister) are getting ready for bed. Yes, it's only 7:30, why do you ask?

When fiction, baby goat sweaters, and chatty Fed Ex guys collide

I promised my friend that I would knit sweaters for his baby goats. His goat was pregnant, but I had no idea what the gestational period was for a goat. I figured I had time, though, because as I remembered, pregnancy basically lasts forever.

Except when you're a goat. I'd just proudly completed one sweater, when I woke up to photos of the brand new baby goats on Facebook Monday morning... so I cast on and knit like the wind! The baby goats will be cold! I must discharge my duty! My needles were flying! I knit standing up, while making lunch, through hula class. I wisely chose not to knit while driving. And then I finished with sore fingers and a big sigh of relief just in time to mail the sweaters off that same day. We went straight from hula where I'd had to weave in ends with my bare hands because I forgot my needle and Boop was still swishing her hips next to me and eyeing the candy counter while I eyed the Ground Delivery truck getting ready to leave in the parking lot. I plopped the sweaters on the counter and looked for help.

Which I got from a very chatty Fed Ex guy. The goat sweaters were quirky enough. I figured that would buy me enough small talk to get the package on the truck and race home to make dinner.

But no, we got to chatting about how he plays online games with his kids, and I mentioned that I did, too, all the while filling out address forms and declining insurance (the money's in the fingers!). He asked which games I played. I rattled them off. (Driving Kids anyone? MMPORGs for the 3 year old set are all the rage, especially when narrated by robots with indiscernible accents.) He knew them all. Wow, he'd never met anyone who gamed with their kids like he did. So to lend a little credibility, I mentioned that I'd worked testing video games for a while. Wouldn't want him to think I was telling tales. That job was for about 9 months about 7 years ago, and I used a lot of the experience in the YA noir book that an agent is reading *right now*.

So, he said he play tested games for EA and rattled off all the titles he worked on - where did I work? What titles did I work on?

Now in my defense, I had been knitting frantically all day, and Boop was twirling closer and closer to the Red Vines, but I tell you the only things that came to mind was the name of the company my main character worked for and all the fictional games he'd tested. Not a single real title could I recall. I nearly blurted out "The Virtz" which I'd subbed in for The Sims, but had never actually tested. Five more came to mind, all fictional. I managed to describe the company, but the only name I could think of was Playbox Labs. And we all know there's no such thing as a Playbox, folks.

I'm sure there's a moral here. Maybe - always find out the gestational period of a goat.

Things said by Mystery Man this morning

On walking into the bathroom...
"Oh my, there's Daddy Giant's tooth brush"

On watching me walk into the bedroom to get his jeans
"Oh my, it very dark in here. You ok? It really very dark and scary"

On realizing Boop was home with Daddy as we drove to school
"Oh, we missing a zombie!"

On watching Red walk off to school,
"There goes the Red Bird! I tell her watch out for cars. Now, let's go get a hot cocoa."

On coming home and seeing his Red Robin balloon
"Oh, there my balloon. It wake up and ready to play."

As you can see, he's fond of exclamations, a slight British speak that I can't explain, and has renamed everyone in the house. DH and I are both Giants. Boop is Zombie (not a name she loves, by the way) and Red is "the red bird." Pretty sure that's because she sleeps in the highest bunk, or "her nest" that he has to "climb the tree" to get into.

Japan

I know you all know what's going on. Images are everywhere. These are two that I wanted to share.

If you go here you can see before and after shots from Google Earth of some of the major areas hit by the earthquake and tsunami. It's an incredible use of technology to give you a sense of the destruction.

And this from The Weekly Magazine A very scared giant panda, grabbing hold of a policeman.



I've been able to check on my friends there to make sure they are alright. Facebook and forums are such a blessing in that way. I hope your friends are alright, too.