Should there be a content warning on this post? You're about to see images that may be disturbing to some viewers:

Yes, that is my mother with a gun. Thankfully, it is just a BB gun.
"It's a lot bigger than my other BB gun," she said. The one that didn't shoot straight.
She wants to shoot at the pigeons to scare them away from the bird feeders. She claims she doesn't want to shoot the birds, just scare them away. She's going to shoot from her balcony.
Really, it doesn't get more redneck than that. Won't be long until she's shooting squirrels and frying up  their brains. 
It was her son-in-law who bought her this BB gun, by the way. Let's blame it on the drugs he's taking for the shoulder pain. Must be addling his mind. Wait till he's sitting on the front deck and she uses the cigarette hanging out of his mouth for target practice...

Mum, my friend Jane and I had an awesome evening in Halifax last night.
We ate supper at The Wooden Monkey, a restaurant made famous by actor Ellen Page, and it's worth the celebrity endorsement then we spent three hours basking in the singing of...
...The Tenors!
At 71, my mother attended her first concert! And she only complained twice about how loud it was. The Tenors made her night by singing Cohen's "Hallelujah".
The show is really good; the four men make you feel like you are the only audience in the world. Loved their chit-chat, and each tenor gets to be on stage alone to tell a story then sing a song, something not in their group repetoire. Their live rendition of "Amazing Grace" is better than the CD version.
The most memorable, for us East Coasters, wasn't just that Jimmy Rankin opened with a few songs (he's in town for the East Coast Music Awards this week) but he came on in the middle of their second set to sing two East Coast ballads with them, including his own Rankin favourite, "Fare Thee Well". One of the tenors said he can now put a check mark next to 'Sing with Jimmy Rankin'.
And -- BEST ENCORE EVER. They picked the perfect song to bring down the roof.

Since they're wrapping up their Canadian tour before heading to the States where they released their CD in January, go get that CD, "Lead With Your Heart" - great for the car where you can crank it.

March is coming in like a lion -- and we are glad. This is what roaring and tossing your mane around will get you:
A DATE FOR SURGERY.
One month tomorrow, Dwayne will be getting his shoulder fixed.
Only found out at 8:30 this morning and it hasn't sunk in yet, we've been waiting so long.

(AG, your 75th birthday is lucky!)

Happy 75th Birthday, Aunt Gail!
And many more...

Stella is 10 years old today.

We had a dinner party for her and her one friend, Sam, was here (along with her human friends Jane and Jerry). Everyone got a piece of carrot cake but Stella's piece was the biggest. Because she's the birthday girl
 

 

Stella says it was a very good birthday. 

This is our version of WWF: World Wrestling Felines.
Archie never says a word but we know when the games are about to begin because we hear Fern's low "Errrrr...." growl. We actually sit and watch this. We actually give points for pins and pounces, rolls and rumbles. Sometimes we hear a body slam against the floor. Then suddenly you look and the cats are lying two feet apart, looking totally relaxed, tails barely flicking, as if they were a moment earlier ripping at each other's throats and pushing their paws into each other's eyes.

I put a quote on my FB page yesterday: "Rejection isn't failure. Failure is giving up." (Richard Castle). I like the part about not giving up which is what I do best. But a friend saw it and thought something had happened and she scurried over here to see if I'd written about it.
No, everything is fine. I just like the remember, a la Winston Churchill, to never ever ever give up.
That's not to say things can't be adjusted, however.
Instead of the heavy weight of a thousand words a day, I am aiming to write about 5,000 a week and planning to have at least 50,000 words written by the end of June. If it's more, great. Otherwise, I'm not going to enjoy this new adventure of writing fiction if all I feel is pressure every day, especially when I still have a column to produce each week. Once I hit my stride, which I haven't yet -- hence writing on the blog at 11 o'clock in the morning-- I will find it easier to write this story; 1,000 words is only 4 pages; in stride, I can do twice that but only if I know what's happening on each page. I'm struggling with the beginning in part because I don't have the plot fully developed, as in the order of events. I have the destination and the passengers but the road map is not clear enough.
But that's no reason not to write something so off I go. Good or bad writing, it doesn't matter because it's the draft. Just as long as it's four pages.